About Capstone Editing
We are Australia’s only academic editing company owned and directed by an academic. Our service is built on ensuring the highest-possible quality of editing and providing an exceptional standard of client support.
We are Australia’s only academic editing company owned and directed by an academic. Our service is built on ensuring the highest-possible quality of editing and providing an exceptional standard of client support.
Capstone Editing is a specialist academic editing company, servicing the needs of academics, students and universities. Underpinning every aspect of our business is our commitment to providing the finest-quality academic editing possible.
Our editors, who are also experienced academics, are specifically trained as academic editors, rather than as generalist editors. Combined, our editors have edited more academic documents than any other editing company in Australia.
We have edited countless postgraduate theses, journal articles, conference papers, grant applications, book chapters and manuscripts during careers that for some of our editors have spanned over 30 years.
In January 2019, Capstone Editing became the first editing company in Australia and New Zealand to partner with an after-pay service. This move has allowed us to ensure our professional editing services are more accessible and affordable for our clients, in particular postgraduate students. We look forward to working with Payright and Humm to continue help our clients achieve their educational and career goals.
We are proud to be members of the following industry and professional organisations, which all have strict requirements and high standards for professional membership.
Our office is located in Canberra, Australia’s educational capital, but our talented editing team of exclusively Australian and New Zealand academic editors live all over Australia and the world. This allows us to be working to fulfil the needs of our clients at any time of the day or night.
Dr Nelson Mok is an academic editor and researcher with experience in the fields of applied linguistics, education and philosophy. During his BA, he developed a curiosity for research methodology, which became an interest in the philosophy, process and structures of research writing during his postgraduate degrees.
His PhD thesis connected the cultural-historical concept of perezhivanie (roughly translated as ‘lived experience’) with autoethnography and reflexivity to argue for a dialectical understanding of the processes of research: the development of theory, the research project and the researcher.
Dr Mok understands the demands and frustrations of academic writing and enjoys the challenge of helping students and academics craft elegant, efficient and effective expressions of complex ideas and arguments so that they are conveyed in their best light to their intended audience. All his editing work is exacting and of the highest possible standard. Dr Mok always takes extra time to provide thoughtful and beneficial advice and explanations to his clients.
Dr Sarah Pearce is a highly experienced academic editor, fiction editor and poet. Her PhD thesis analysed the suffering female body in the works of Emily and Charlotte Brontë, synthesising contemporary feminist theory and Gothic theory to explain the multiple significances of the female body in canonical texts. Her research interests include Gothic literature, nineteenth-century women’s literature and feminist literary criticism. Dr Pearce’s work has been published in Aeternum: The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies, Outskirts: Feminisms along the edge, Meniscus, Writing from Below and TEXT.
Dr Pearce is incredibly well rounded as an academic editor. Still, she is particularly experienced in copyediting and substantively editing applications for academic employment and promotion, having worked in the Flinders University Research Office as an ARC grant applications auditor and editor prior to joining Capstone Editing, where she has gained even more experience in this specialist area. Dr Pearce is deeply familiar with the expectations of publishers for both scholarly and creative work and adept at assisting students to meet the particular academic requirements for honours, master’s and PhD theses.
Dr Pearce is an accomplished, flexible and professional editor, whose broad-ranging research, publishing and editorial experience equips her to approach a variety of editing jobs with sensitivity and rigour.
Amanda Webster, AE, has managed, coordinated and coached several teams in a variety of settings. She is experienced in managing workflows and is passionate about helping others learn. In particular, her ability to break down complex ideas and convey them plainly yet comprehensively serves her well as our Assistant Program Coordinator.
As a former intermediate artistic roller skating coach (and Senior International competitor herself), Ms Webster has years of experience training and mentoring students at an elite level. This role also required that Ms Webster complete the Australian Institute of Sport’s Community Coaching General Principles course and maintain Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority certificates each year.
Read the full profile for Amanda Webster here.
Accredited Editor, Institute of Professional Editors
Bachelor of Creative Industries with Distinction (Creative and Professional Writing and Journalism), Queensland University of Technology
Deborah Kane is a technical and academic editor with a background in the social sciences, humanities and the arts. Her research areas have included politics, culture, media and education. Ms Kane has worked as a freelance technical and academic editor for the past eight years, with clients including research scientists, educational publishers and universities.
Ms Kane has an exceptional talent for presenting technical language and concepts in a clear and informative manner. As a writer and editor at Lateral Magazine, Ms Kane worked with academics using plain English principles to create a wide range of science-based content that was accessible to a diverse readership. As an English language teacher, Ms Kane used her extensive language and communication skills to structure course content effectively, as well as to give pertinent feedback to improve her students’ writing. This experience in particular is what makes Ms Kane one of Capstone Editing’s top ESL editors. She is devoted to assisting postgraduate students and academics to communicate their research in clear and concise academic English. Ms Kane thoroughly enjoys working with writers and students to improve their technical writing skills and ensure that their ideas are expressed clearly and confidently.
At Capstone Editing, Ms Kane works under the direction of Dr Lines to ensure that our reputation as the highest-quality academic editing service is maintained. This involves implementing our rigorous quality assurance management system and working with our editors to ensure that they are consistently following the policies and procedures developed by Dr Lines.