Susan Matheson has been editing for faculty members, academic institutions, and publishers since 2004. Her specialty is academic copyediting and developmental editing, especially in the areas of engineering, science, history, cultural studies, and psychology.

Clients include faculty members from Harvard, MIT, Stanford, University of Michigan, Northeastern, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Washington, and other institutions. Their manuscripts have been published by Yale University Press,

Wiley Blackwell, MIT Press, Palgrave Macmillan,

and various engineering journals.

Publisher clients include Princeton University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, and RIT Press.

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Please visit the Projects page for a sampling of her expertise.

 

Susan enjoys working directly with professors, helping them organize their ideas and communicate them clearly and elegantly. She sees herself as a partner with the faculty member to create high-quality writing that best serves the reader. Susan also works with non-native English speakers, ensuring that their final manuscript reads smoothly and accurately. When given a new project, she reviews articles and books to educate herself on the main ideas of the topic, as well as the nuances and controversies.

 

Susan is also a writer and has published a number of science articles for a general audience in the biology journal Cell; she wrote two units for an introductory biology curriculum; she co-wrote a World War II memoir from the recorded stories of the author; and she wrote a book-length film study guide.

 

Susan’s diverse educational background serves her well as an editor. She earned a BS in systems engineering from the University of Arizona and an MS in industrial engineering from Rutgers University. After working as a systems engineer in data communications at AT&T Bell Laboratories, she supplemented her technical background with a liberal arts education by taking courses and reading extensively in evolutionary and cognitive sciences, European and American history, philosophy, psychology, communications, and gender and sexuality studies. In addition, she has taken multiple editing and proofreading courses, including Fundamentals of Manuscript Editing from the University of Wisconsin.

 

An enthusiastic and curious learner, Susan has been involved in academic communities for most of her adult life, as a graduate student, instructor, staff member, writer, editor, and researcher.

 

Susan lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts for six years. In 2020, because of the pandemic, she and her husband moved to Tucson, Arizona, her hometown.