Presenters
Jennifer Blunden
Jennifer is an editor and writer who specialises in developing texts for public audiences, particularly in museums and galleries. She has a background in linguistics and learning theory and an MA in Public History (UTS). She was formerly the senior exhibitions editor at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. She currently works at the Art Gallery of NSW as an editor and consults to a number of cultural institutions around Australia.
Cathy Bruce
Cathy is web editor and publisher for the Australian Antarctic Division's internet. Graduating with a BSc from Adelaide University, she spent several years in medical science. The career change to writing and editing came after being asked to write procedure manuals for hospital staff, and deciding that writing about science was more satisfying and fitted better into a life with two young children than on-call laboratory shift-work.
Hilary Cadman
Hilary worked in medical research before moving from the UK to Zimbabwe to teach biochemistry. She then returned to the UK and added a Masters degree in Science Communication to her PhD. Since joining Biotext in 1999, Hilary has researched and written reports, summaries, fact sheets and articles on various scientific issues; she also runs training courses in science writing, editing and the publication process. Hilary is an accredited editor with the World Health Organization and the Board of Editors in the Life Sciences (USA). If she had any spare time, Hilary would like to spend it in her permaculture garden.
Carolyn Cockburn
Carolyn holds a Masters degree in Education and has spent much of her professional life writing, editing and publishing curriculum support materials. Carolyn developed this paper when she was Publishing Officer for the South Australian Department of Education and Children’s Services. She has just embarked on a challenging new role: writing, editing and publishing the policy for volunteering in schools and preschools for the department. She is currently the Secretary for the Society of Editors (SA).
Amanda Curtin
Amanda has more than 20 years editing experience, most of it as a book editor (fiction, children's picture books, general non-fiction and scholarly titles). She is an IPEd Accreditation Board delegate, a past president of the Society of Editors (WA), and a graduate of the Australian Publishers Association's Residential Editorial Program. She has been published in Westerly and Island, and is a past winner of the University of Canberra National Short Story Award. In 2006 she completed a doctorate in writing.
Melanie Dankel
Melanie has had several career incarnations: as a desktop operator for a print firm, multimedia producer, marketing coordinator and editor. She is currently a Managing Editor for Lonely Planet Publications, focusing on quality control of products, process improvement and leading her team of eight editors to embrace changes on the horizon in the publishing industry. She is a committee member and training officer for the Society of Editors (Vic.) and is currently studying for her Masters of Arts (Communication) at RMIT.
Marilyn Dorman
Marilyn is a Learning and Teaching Designer in the Learning and Teaching Support Unit, USQ. She is also a Mind-Mapping® instructor and an Accredited Buzan Licensed Instructor (Advanced), with the Buzan Centre Australia. Marilyn has taught at pre-tertiary and postgraduate levels, and has over 25 years experience in instructional design and development within USQ, as well as for other universities and with health education providers. She has previously worked as a journalist and is a Queensland representative on the Institute of Professional Editors (IPEd) Education Training and Mentoring Working Group.
Susan Hall
Susan studied English at Cambridge University. She started her career as an editor in the commercial publishing industry, first in England and France and then in Australia. She has been working in the publications divisions of various cultural institutions for the past 10 years. She is currently Publishing Manager at the National Library of Australia.
Brian Harrison
Brian Harrison holds degrees in Chemistry from Imperial College, London University, and in Environmental Pollution Control from Leeds University. He has lectured at various universities in Japan, including the University of Tokyo, Waseda University and Meiji University, and is currently Professor in the Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University (Tokyo). He is an active member of the European Association of Science Editors, and was the 1995 recipient of the annual translation award of the Japanese Society of Translators.
Pamela Hewitt
A freelance editor, writer, trainer and proprietor of Emend Editing, Pamela publishes The Fine Print, an independent online journal for editors and writers. She launched ‘Professional Editing’, online training courses for editors, in 2005 and her second series, ‘Editing for Writers’ goes online progressively during 2007. Pamela is a qualified teacher who has developed and presented editing programs for universities, TAFE, writers' centres, literary festivals and editors' societies around Australia. She is convenor of the IPEd national working group on education, training and mentoring.
Shelley Kenigsberg
Shelley has over 20 years experience in editing, and for the past 11 years she has held the position of Coordinator/lecturer for the Macleay College Book Editing and Publishing Diploma Course. Her previous experience includes consultant overseas on educational textbook writing and publishing, and publications coordinator with NCELTR, Macquarie University. She was also a commissioning editor at Jacaranda Wiley, SHP, Collins Dove and Harcourt Brace, and has been freelance since 1998.
Lawrie Kirk
Lawrie has over 25 years of experience in project management in the natural resource sector, and has recently developed frameworks for corporate communication strategies. Lawrie's industry experience in developing a more strategic approach to communication activities was recognised by his appointment in 2006 as a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science at the Australian National University in Canberra. He is currently a Senior Consultant for Tanner James Management Consultants and is a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner and accredited trainer in PRINCE2 project management methodology.
Ai-Leen Lin
Ai-Leen has over eight years of editorial experience. She began her career in educational publishing, producing curriculum materials for schools. She also spent several years in a design firm, providing editorial support to corporate clients. Ai-Leen is currently a Research Associate with the Centre for Research in Pedagogy and Practice, an educational research centre based in the National Institute of Education, Singapore. She is involved in managing the Centre's various publications, including academic journals, books, an e-magazine for teachers and the Centre's web portal.
Bettylyn Mantell
Bettylyn manages a team of writers, editors, and document assessors for Write Group, a New Zealand company that specialises in plain English editing and writing services for corporate and public sector clients and offers training in business writing. Write Group administers WriteMark, New Zealand’s plain English quality standard for documents and websites. Bettylyn established The Write Style Guide for New Zealanders and is an advocate for Write Group's online learning program. She has been actively involved in developing the WriteMark plain English standard and manages the WriteMark document and website assessment processes.
Vivienne Mawson
Vivienne Mawson (Zimbabwean born and South African educated) taught writing and research skills in the United States before coming to Australia as a college librarian. Jacaranda Wiley rescued her and she was later appointed the science editor for the CSIRO Division of Marine Research. She has given science writing workshops throughout Australia and in New Zealand, South Africa and Germany. She was a co-founder of the Society of Editors (Tas). Vivienne has an MA from the University of Cape Town, a PhD in English and an MLS from the University of Texas at Austin, and is qualified to teach English as a foreign language.
Jenna Mead
Jenna teaches in the English program at the University of Tasmania and has particular interests in late-14th century English medieval writing and the ongoing discourses of medievalism that pervade post-medieval periods, including contemporary popular film, electronic and writing cultures. She held the first Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded in the Humanities, through the Department of English, at La Trobe University, is a member of the Editorial Board for the Cultural Studies Review.
Tasmin McNaughtan
Tasmin began her working career in education before making the break to publishing, starting first in magazines then joining Lonely Planet as an editor in 2002. In her time at Lonely Planet, Tasmin has taken on a number of different roles including Coordinating Editor, Editorial Style & Process Manager, Training Manager, Commissioning Editor and Writer. This has given her a unique understanding of the challenges facing editors in the 21st century, as publishers look to new media for future content delivery. While she dearly loves books, she's prepared to accept that the internet isn't going to go away.
Sharon Nevile
Sharon has been an editor and publications project manager for the past 19 years. She began her editorial career at the Australian Government Publishing Service in Canberra, working on projects ranging from military histories to an illustrated children's book. Since 1998 she has been a freelance editor, project manager and occasional desktop publisher, specialising in trade (non-fiction) and educational publications. In 2002 she began teaching in the Graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing program at the University of Southern Queensland, and co-wrote a new certificate course in 2004.
David Owen
David Owen was born and raised in Africa. He lived in England before migrating to Australia and settling in Tasmania in 1990. He has written several novels, including the ‘Pufferfish’ crime series. He commenced a natural history series with Thylacine: the Tragic Tale of the Tasmanian Tiger (Allen & Unwin 2003, Johns Hopkins UP), followed by Tasmanian Devil: a Unique and Threatened Animal (Allen & Unwin 2005), co-authored with David Pemberton. Shark will be published in 2008. Owen edited the literary magazine, Island, for five years. He is currently Director of Publishing, Quintus Publishing at the University of Tasmania, and also oversees literary programs developed by Arts Tasmania.
David Pemberton
David Pemberton has worked as a biologist in a number of countries, focusing on predators, both on land and at sea. After studying hyaenas in South Africa, David emigrated to Australia to study the ecology of the Tasmanian Devil. His interest in Tasmanian fauna diversified with his involvement in seal and seabird conservation programs, during which he travelled to Macquarie and Heard Islands, as well as the Antarctic continent. David is currently the Senior Curator, Antarctic and Southern Ocean, at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery in Hobart. Apart from marine birds and mammals, his current interests and activities include species as diverse as the Thylacine, Tasmanian Devils and Giant Squid. He is co-author of Tasmanian Devil: a Unique and Threatened Animal (Allen & Unwin 2005) with David Owen.
Pam Peters
Pam Peters is Professor in Linguistics and Director of the Dictionary Research Centre at Macquarie University. She researched and wrote the Cambridge Guide to English Usage (Cambridge University Press 2004), and the Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (Cambridge University Press, 2007). As Director of the Postgraduate Program in Editing and Publishing at Macquarie University, she works with trainee editors, and convenes the regular Style Council conferences for language-using professionals in Australia. She contributed six chapters to the sixth edition of the Australian Government Style Manual (John Wiley 2002), and is a member of the ABC's Standing Committee on Spoken English.
Wendy Pyper
Wendy has been working as Editor of the Australian Antarctic Magazine, and as a communication officer at the Australian Antarctic Division, since 2004. Prior to that she worked as a science writer for CSIRO in Brisbane, as Associate Editor of ECOS magazine, and spent six years as a freelance science journalist. She is widely published in a range of magazines, newsletters and on web sites, including Today's Life Science, Australasian Science and ABC Science Online. She has a PhD in Medicine from the University of Queensland, and a background in medical research and forensic science.
Janet Salisbury
Janet worked in cancer research before setting up her own science consulting, writing and editing business, now called Biotext, which has offices in Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne. She has researched, written and edited numerous reports, public discussion papers, summaries, factsheets, proceedings and technical papers on issues relating to health, agriculture and the environment. Janet was a founder member of the Canberra Society of Editors. She is a certified Editor in the Life Sciences (ELS) with the Board of Editors of the Life Sciences (USA).
Thérèse Weber
Thérèse is currently Senior Editor at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra where she edits exhibition text and a diverse range of books for National Museum of Australia Press. She is also co-editor of the museum's independent scholarly e-journal, reCollections. She was previously manager of research and publications at the Australian Defence Studies Centre. Her PhD thesis on the 1840s journals of Georgiana McCrae has left her with an abiding interest in historical documentary editing and the influence of editors on meaning and interpretation.
Virginia Wilton
Ten years ago, Virginia established a publishing company – WHH Publishing – which delivers up to 300 projects a year, mainly for federal government agencies. Virginia has a special interest in annual reports and was a founding co-director of Annual Reports Initiative, formed specifically to integrate the services that agencies need to produce a successful report. Virginia is currently President of the Canberra Society of Editors, Canberra delegate to the interim Council of the new national Institute of Professional Editors, and a member of the International Association of Business Communicators.
Irene Wong
Irene Wong is Publishing Manager at ASIC in Sydney where she is an information designer of materials on corporate and financial services regulation and for consumers. She was previously a research officer and editor at ABS and a teacher in Hong Kong. She organises meetings for a group of communicators from legal firms and financial services companies. She has spoken at an IIID financial communicators' forum in New York and technical communication conferences. She has written articles on editing tables, annual reports and the risks communicators face.
Jennifer Wright
Jennifer was a project editor with John Wiley & Sons for seven years. Before that she edited Australasian Science magazine at USQ Press for four years and worked in educational publishing for many years. She also teaches the Graduate Certificate in Editing and Publishing at the University of Southern Queensland and co-wrote the course. As well as working with print, Jennifer enjoys digital video, CD-ROM and art.
