Lectures

I have more than 20 years of experience in giving lively lectures and workshops about Academic English. For your PhD days, conferences, research gatherings, and other meetings.

I offer the following lectures and workshops:

Writing for Publication for researchers

This interactive lecture / workshop helps researchers (especially early career researchers) to improve their application of basic principles of Academic Writing in English.

The workshop is tailor made: I will use the specific learning objectives of individual participants and their understanding of written Academic English as input.

I taught this workshop in Brussels to twenty researchers in the InnoDC research project, funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research Programme.

Personality in Academic Writing

In this lecture, I examine the expression of personality in academic writing and ask what an academic voice actually entails. Many academics have become critical of the idea of the academic writer as a detached, neutral, impersonal observer. Where to go from there?

I taught this workshop to early career researchers in the Graduate School of the Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University, and it has turned out to be one of my favorite subjects!

On commas and such: how English punctuation works

I noticed in my writing sessions that writers do not always know how English punctuation works. And punctuation can make or break a text!

This is a combined lecture and workshop with lots of explanations, exercises, and concrete and witty punctuation examples from academic texts.

Did he just say that? culture and politeness

Would you like to learn more about English irony and politeness and their relation to cultural differences? In Dutch or English, with lots of examples (also from research) and audiovisual materials. To ease your communication in the workplace!

Leaving academia for entrepreneurship: how to use your transferable skills

In 2000 I left the Free University in Amsterdam to start my own company. I’ve been an entrepreneur with a PhD for more than twenty years now, and I like to share my entrepreneurial tips and tricks with you. 

I last gave this lecture at a PhD Activating Career Event at Utrecht University.

Here is a short piece I wrote just after I had left my academic job with one assignment in my order book (to this day I remember Professor Gloria Wekker cheerfully giving me this assignment).