About
Rachel Hynson, Ph.D.
(she/they)
I’m a developmental editor, publication coach, and speaker. I help qualitative scholars navigate academia’s unspoken expectations and publish their research. In the process, I center scholars who feel like outsiders and 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.
Previously, I served for six years as director of an eight-institution, grant-funded initiative based at Middlebury College to broaden the pipeline to the professoriate for minoritized students in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
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 and editing for career advancement. I also work one-on-one with humanistic scholars to help them meet their writing goals; I recently reached 650 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 in central North Carolina with my partner and our cat.
Outside of et al. Scholars, I serve as a country conditions expert and expert witness for LGBTQ+ Cubans seeking asylum in the U.S.