Since 2012, I’ve contributed my qualitative expertise to scientific research projects on topics including HIV treatment, homicide-suicides, palliative care, gender disparities in medicine, smoking cessation, and a variety of topics in primary and preventive care medicine. I’m privileged to work in the Substance Use research group led by Prof. Dr. med. Reto Auer, and to coach his graduate students in writing.
Curriculum design and teaching take up much of my time, and I’m homed in the Research Support Services department of the Medical Library of the University of Bern.. Since most ESL writers in the sciences have not had the opportunity to get the same training in rhetoric, composition, and scientific writing as native English speakers (especially those trained in the US), I’ve developed a series of scientific writing workshops that train writers in essential skills, from proper English paragraphing, to outlining, to drafting the narrative and objective sections of scientific papers. My training as a literary theorist was surprisingly useful in devising this teaching method, which has now been institutionalized in the medical, dental, and pharmacy curriculum at the University of Bern, and extended to students at the Swiss Tropical Health Institute and students of the Switzerland-wide public health program, SSPH+.