ROWENA MURRAY graduated MA (Hons) from Glasgow University, PhD from the Pennsylvania State University and is a Principal Fellow of the UK’s Advance Higher Education. Formerly Professor in the School of Education and Social Sciences at the University of the West of Scotland, she is now an independent scholar and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on academic writing, the subject of her research, articles and books. Her book How to Write a Thesis is in its fifth edition (2025). Across the UK and in other countries, she runs online, in-person and hybrid writing courses, retreats and groups for academics, researchers, PhD students, Early Career Researchers, creative writers and others through her company, Anchorage Educational Services. Online writing groups on Facebook: Rowena Murray Writing Group. Details on the new website: professorrowenamurray.com.

WENDY BALDWIN has been supporting writers and academic text production for three decades as an academic writing instructor at universities in the US, Sweden and Spain, an independent authors’ editor and Spanish-to-English translator primarily helping multilanguage scholars prepare their texts for submission to journals, and a structured writing retreat facilitator. She’s interested in exploring the larger academic text and publication ecosystem and using social writing methods to more closely connect the various communities of practice within the ecosystem. In 2018 she began embedding social writing methods in virtual co-working spaces shared with academic partners and fellow editors and translators and in her writing training for PhD students. She is co-editor of Women Writing Socially in Academia: Dispatches from Writing Rooms, with Joana Pais Zozimo and Kate Sotejeff-Wilson.

ALEXANDER BUHMANN is Professor of Communication in the Department of Communication and Culture at BI Norwegian Business School. He also serves as the Director of #NORA – The Nordic Alliance for Communication & Management. Alexander’s research is situated at the intersection of communication, digital technology, and management. In his current work, he focuses on digitalization and automation in communication and their implications for management as well as for public and corporate governance. Alexander serves on the core research team of the European Communication Monitor (ECM – the largest transnational study on strategic communication worldwide), is a member of the expert panel on artificial intelligence at the Royal Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) and serves as the chair of the annual Paper Development Workshop, held during the congress of the European Public Relations Education and Research Association (EUPRERA).

EMMA DAVENPORT is currently Head of Student Experience and Academic Outcomes for the School of Architecture, Art and Design at London Metropolitan University. Her approach to scholarship is often with the student perspective in mind and is a Senior Fellow of the UK’s Advance Higher Education.  With a multi-disciplinary background in education (Leeds University), design history (Royal College of Art), anthropology (Brunel) and psychology (London Met), her pedagogic research intertwines both humanities and social sciences, with an emphasis on academic writing practices and material culture, as well as the ‘third space’ and AI within universities. A trained Structured Writing Retreat Facilitator, Emma has set up and led various structured writing spaces since 2020, which include the Writing Social (21/22) and the Writing Studio (24/25). 

JO GARRICK has developed researchers at the University of Leeds since 2007. She manages the Northern Advanced Research Training Initiative (NARTI), a consortium of 17-university business and management schools that provides training and professional development for researchers at all career stages, and is a founding member of the Writing for Research and Academic Practice (WRAP) European network. Jo co-leads the Research Leadership Development Consortium (RLDC), a multi-university network, providing a space for senior research leaders to share best practice, identify synergies, and advance research leadership. Jo is currently studying a Masters Degree in Creative Writing with the Open University, and brings academic and creative writers together through the facilitation of Structured Writing Retreats. Jo trained with Professor Rowena Murray in 2018 and has facilitated writing retreats for academic, creative and professional writers, in the UK and overseas, since then. Jo contributed a chapter in Women Writing Socially in Academia: Dispatches from Writing Rooms (Palgrave 2024).

SARAH HAAS has been working with writers for over 30 years, teaching in countries across Asia, Africa, Europe, the UK, and North America. She completed her doctoral studies at Aston University in Birmingham, England, focusing on writers and how they develop the skills necessary to manage larger writing projects. She currently works as a teaching fellow at Ghent and Copenhagen Universities, alongside running her consultancy business, Writer Development. Here, she conducts research with and for writers, designing research-based tools for helping writers develop in all areas: Person, Process and Product.

JOANA PAIS is a social scientist and researcher, interested in evaluation practice, African studies, collaborative learning,  and the use of social practice theory in education and community development. She has 25 years’ experience in evaluative research and community projects across the UK and in Portugal, Spain, and various African countries, having lived and worked in Mozambique. Joana worked extensively on the Global Challenges Research Fund, interdisciplinary project RECIRCULATE, mainly in Ghana. Her experience with academic writing led to a more profound interest in well-being approaches to writing when supporting her peers. She trained as a writing retreat facilitator and delivers healthy writing retreats at Lancaster University (FASS and LUMS) and in other universities in the UK and abroad. She is currently visiting researcher at LUMS, Lancaster University. Based in Portugal, Joana teaches at various universities and is the Executive Manager at Museum Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a stunning location for writing retreats and research-led workshops in the beautiful North Portuguese mountains.

KATE SOTEJEFF-WILSON (PhD UCL 2005) midwifes texts for academics and the arts. She translates into and edits in English at KSW Translations, runs Ridge Writing Retreats, and chairs Nordic Editors and Translators. Her recent translations include Esa Kirkkopelto’s Logomimesis (Routledge 2024) from Finnish and Regina Töpfer’s Negotiating Childlessness in the Middle Ages (Arc Humanities Press 2025) from German. With Wendy Baldwin and Joana Zozimo, she co-edited Women Writing Socially in Academia: Dispatches from Writing Rooms (Palgrave 2024). Kate trained with Rowena Murray and has been facilitating writing retreats since 2019, online and in person where she is based, in Finland.