Rahat Kurd

With 30 years of editing experience, I provide PhD candidates and established academic faculty alike with independent close reading and restructuring of dissertations, research reports, journal articles, and book manuscripts in the social sciences and humanities, most often within a feminist and decolonial experiential lens. Beyond making core arguments stronger, and sharpening the clarity and flow of a work, I take particular pleasure in helping scholars render their critical and often interdisciplinary approaches to interpreting research findings in greater depth, with ease and confidence. 

Recent substantive/developmental editing projects have included: a 350-page study of actor and filmmaker Shah Rukh Khan amid the concomitant rise of Hindutva political power and Bollywood as a global cultural phenomenon; a 440-page study of youth and women who led the popular Syrian revolution which began in 2011; a 300-page multidisciplinary resource on Islamic law and gender equality designed for women’s rights advocacy groups in Afghanistan; and an intersectional feminist research report on the wider social and gendered impacts of Covid-19 which compiled data from 7 different countries. 

I am an award-winning poet, a literary editor, manuscript consultant, and sought-after mentor for emerging poets and writers. An attentive reader, I think constantly about the English language as a shared, evolving global phenomenon whose vitality we must protect. I am especially sensitive to the cultural dimension of translation to which multilingual researchers and practitioners are bringing increasingly careful attention. Having studied many languages, I feel strongly invested in supporting scholars and writers to give full, nuanced expression to multilingual perspectives which in turn have the potential to enrich and sustain the vitality of the English language for generations to come.