Hi there, I’m Dr. Andrew Hodges.
I help cultural anthropologists, qualitative sociologists, and scholars in adjacent fields strengthen their manuscripts before submission to journals and publishers, drawing on both academic developmental editing and the craft techniques of fiction and creative nonfiction.
My goal in this role is to help you navigate the publishing world with confidence—a world that can seem confusing and opaque to academics.
What distinguishes my approach is that I'm also a trained and experienced fiction editor who has worked on multiple New York Times bestsellers. These skills supplement the academic focus on style and argument with expertise in voice, rhythm, and evocative description, qualities I especially enjoy bringing to ethnographic writing.
Whatever your publishing goal, my edits will identify issues that often frustrate or disengage readers, and offer simple solutions wherever possible.
Who I work with
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I work with academics in the narrative humanities and social sciences. Disciplines include: social and cultural anthropology, qualitative social science, political science, history of ideas, women’s studies, and queer studies.
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While I work across all these areas, I have expertise in cultural anthropology and the history of science, and within cultural anthropology, I’m an excellent fit for literary anthropology, ecological anthropology, masculinities and gender, ethnographic methods manuscripts, the anthropology of work, and political anthropology.
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I'm fluent in Croatian, German, and Spanish, with intermediate-level knowledge of Czech and French. As a result, I often collaborate with academics working across languages and cultures.
My approach to editing and consulting:
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I’m trained and highly skilled in fiction editing, too, and I offer cultural anthropologists feedback on their ethnography and description from a creative nonfiction perspective as well as an academic developmental editing one.
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My fiction background gives me particular expertise in prose rhythm, voice, and style. These skills are especially valuable when working on ethnography and other narrative-driven scholarly writing, and form the basis of the workshops I run for creative academic authors.
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My feedback style is direct, kind, and supportive.
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I actively support academics from historically marginalized groups and communities, and bring an intersectional perspective to questions of power, representation, and knowledge production.
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Human creativity matters: No generative AI in my writing and editing workflows.
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I encourage careful attention to language, representation, and the broader real-world implications of scholarly writing.
My academic credentials
I hold a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Manchester and an MA in Natural Sciences (history and philosophy of science) from the University of Cambridge. I worked as a cultural anthropologist for over a decade in Croatia and Germany (2008–2019), before retraining as a developmental and substantive editor.
I'm the author of three anthropology monographs, including one on queer approaches to football fan activism in Croatia (Routledge) and more recently, a coauthored monograph on shipyard ethnography (University of Toronto Press). I've discussed my work on national television in Australia and in Red Pepper magazine. You can find my publications here.
My editing credentials
I set up my editorial business full-time in 2019 and trained professionally as a developmental editor and substantive and line editor, including taking courses with the University of Chicago in academic and fiction developmental editing and copyediting. For substantive and line editing, I work primarily in US English and have extensive experience working with the Chicago Manual of Style, though I am equally comfortable editing in UK English.
If you’re an academic who writes (literary) speculative fiction, feel free to contact me about fiction developmental editing critiques too.
Outside my day job, I’m a trail runner, mushroom forager, and speculative fiction writer.