The Center for Academic Writing acts as a bridge between departmental faculty and students. We seek to collaborate with other faculty to understand assignments order to better prepare students to succeed with these writing challenges. We welcome the opportunity to discuss any issues related to academic writing with faculty.

Academic Writing Instructors by Department

Economics: Thomas Rooney

Economic Policy: Thomas Rooney, Vera Eliasova

Environmental Sciences & Policy: Eszter Timar, Vera Eliasova

Gender Studies: Sanjay Kumar, Andrea Kirchknopf, Borbala Farago

History: Sanjay Kumar, Borbala Farago, Robin Bellers, Thomas Rooney

IR: Robin Bellers, Zsuzsanna Toth, Vera Eliasova

Legal Studies:

Comparative Constitutional Law: Robin Bellers

Human Rights: Andrea Kirchknopf and Eva Ajkay-Nagy

International Business Law: David Ridout and Andrea Kirchknopf

Nationalism: Sanjay Kumar and Robin Bellers

Philosophy: Tom Rooney

Political Science: Robin Bellers, Zsuzsanna Toth, Borbala Farago, Eva Ajkay-Nagy

School of Public Policy: Zsuzsanna Toth, Vera Eliasova, Sanjay Kumar, Borbala Farago

Sociology and Social Anthropology: Andrea Kirchknopf, David Ridout

Writing Courses

To familiarize students with the principles of academic writing and help them acquire the necessary skills to complete writing assignments within their disciplines, we offer courses in both semesters. In the fall we prepare students for writing at graduate level, notably term papers but also other genres that the department prefers. In the spring, with some departments, we focus on specific issues related to thesis writing.

We are happy to collaborate with faculty in designing additional workshops or courses to target discipline specific issues. Please contact us with your ideas or questions.

Writing Consultations

We offer individual consultations with students on their departmental assignments. In many departments we work closely with faculty to assist students in writing a paper before the student submits it to the supervisor. The purpose of consultations is educational: to help students to become better writers.We strive to achieve this by discussing their paper, their objectives and their general writing concerns with them, or offering suggestions on conventions of academic writing. We turn away students who request that we rewrite or polish their papers for them, and we ask for your understanding in this. As we are often unable to discuss all the problems of a paper within one consultation, we encourage students to return for further consultations.

If faculty feel a student needs to improve some aspect of their writing, such as organization, clarity, argumentation, use of sources, style or language problems, please recommend students work closely with the CAW for consultations. Setting deadlines for Mondays often means that students do not have the opportunity to come for a consultation. It is therefore very helpful if faculty set deadlines in the last three days of the week in order to allow students to visit the Center for Academic Writing and then have time to revise an assignment before submission.

We teach students general principles of good writing, but they may not always be familiar with the type of task you ask of them, the format you expect or the audience you are asking them to write for. We always appreciate it if you can let us know about the task you are setting and what you expect of the students, so that we can help them as much as possible to meet your expectations. If students are confused or unclear, we may refer them back to you to discuss the task again, but we are also happy to meet you and discuss the terms of the assignments so we are better informed.

If for any reason a faculty member would like students to complete an assignment (such as an exam) without any help from the Writing Center, please let us know us in advance.