About
Rachel Hynson, Ph.D.
(she/they)
I am a queer developmental editor and publication coach. I help qualitative scholars navigate academia’s unspoken expectations and publish their research. In the process, I center scholars who feel like outsiders, and I understand outsider perspectives as strengths.
I have been a prep cook in a dinner theater, life drawing model for art classes, and patient actor for medical students. My first foray into helping others on their higher education journeys was right after college, when I worked as a call-center operator, answering questions about the FAFSA (that needlessly complex application for U.S. student aid).
I hold a PhD in Latin American & Caribbean history, and I've been supporting scholars to craft and publish their scholarship for more than a decade. Et al. Scholars has been my full-time business since 2023.
I’m committed to supporting people who, like me, have struggled to find belonging in academia.
In addition to developmental editing, I provide line editing; editing for career advancement; and, less frequently, copyediting. I also work one-on-one with humanistic scholars to help them meet their writing goals; I recently reached 600 hours of private coaching. Through this work, I’m committed to supporting people who, like me, have struggled to find belonging in academia. I do this by demystifying academic knowledge and norms that form part of the “hidden curriculum” of academia.
Background & positionality
I am sensitive to the deeply personal work of knowledge production; and I build on my own experience as the author of peer-reviewed articles and a scholarly monograph (published by Cambridge University Press in 2019).
I grew up the oldest of five children in a white, evangelical (Focus on the Family) household—largely without television, music, newspapers (or computer). We were lower-middle class and moved every 1-2 years, as my dad “flipped” the houses we lived in. Home was central Pennsylvania and, for a few years, Lawrence, Kansas.
Public school educated, K to PhD, I earned my doctorate in Latin American and Caribbean history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2014) and was an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Dartmouth College. I also hold a BA from the University of Kansas (2005), where I attended as a Pell Grant recipient.
I now live and work in community in central North Carolina.
Outside of et al. Scholars, I serve as a country conditions expert and expert witness for LGBTQ+ Cubans seeking asylum in the U.S.