Interview with Hester Higton

From Council member to CIEP vice-chair

1. You’ve been part of the CIEP Council for some time. How does it feel to step into the role of vice-chair, and what does this new responsibility mean to you? 
   A little daunting, to be honest, but exciting too. I’m looking forward to being even more fully involved in guiding the direction of the Institute. And working more closely with our amazing CEO, Christine.  
2. Looking back on your time on Council so far, what achievements or developments are you most proud of, and how do you hope to build on them in your new position? 
   When I joined the Council, I was thrown in at a very deep end, taking over the training remit, which was a huge portfolio. I’m proud of many of the things that I achieved that year: establishing a regular tutors’ meeting to support them in their work; commissioning the Non-fiction Developmental Editing course, which has been such a huge success, and paved the way for further virtual learning courses; creating the Learning and Professional Developmental Committee (LPDC), so that we can draw on a wide range of voices and expertise to make sure that our training offering meets the needs of the members; and overseeing the migration of all the training courses to a new platform. But perhaps the most important thing that I did was to successfully argue the case for a professional development manager, which meant the arrival of the wonderful Sarah Magee. 
   
   I’ll be continuing to support both the LPDC and tutors, and hope to continue to encourage discussions in both those forums to foster training and CPD that supports our members. There’ll be the remaining part of the Competency Framework (on Specialist Knowledge and Skills) to develop, in partnership with the LPDC. And I hope to be able to start thinking about a long-term home for our training platform, though that may be some way off yet. 
3. As vice-chair, what areas of CIEP’s work are you most looking forward to supporting or shaping in the year ahead? I’m most looking forward to seeing completion of the upgrades project. I’ve already been involved on the steering committee and in other ways behind the scenes. And I’m so excited to see a new model developing that will make the higher membership grades more accessible to a wider range of members – hopefully through a less daunting upgrade process. 

Insight on the editorial profession

4. As an academic editor, what’s one misconception about academic publishing or scholarly editing that you wish more people understood? 
   This is something that I wish authors understood, just as much as editors: academic writing doesn’t always have to be complex. Of course, many scholarly books and articles discuss complicated subjects. But they’re often presented in ways that make it harder for the reader to understand them and there’s no reason for that. I do think that it’s important to aim for using as simple language and sentence structure as the topic allows. Sometimes there will still be highly technical words used, but the rest of the writing should work to make those technicalities more easily understandable. 
    
5. You work extensively with multilingual authors. What approaches do you find most helpful when supporting writers who aren’t native English speakers? 
   First of all, I remember that they’re already doing an incredible job: I could never dream of writing on an academic subject in another language, so they’ve earned my respect from the word go. I try to focus on making sure that their sentence structure works idiomatically, that little verbal tics are ironed out and that the overall argument is sound – just as I would do for any project I take on. 
   
   I also keep in mind that people from different cultures respond differently to feedback. Some like to have very clear-cut responses that come straight to the point, while with others it works better to take a more roundabout approach. 
    
6. You’re also a CIEP tutor. What do you enjoy most about teaching, and what do you hope learners take away from your courses? 
   These days I mostly teach on the virtual learning courses, so I’m interacting with the learners in real time. I love the discussions we have in those sessions, and I always come away having learned something new. It’s wonderful watching people’s confidence develop over the weeks, and the ‘aha’ moments that crop up. I always hope that they will go away with a better understanding of the subject or a few more tricks up their sleeves to help them become better editorial professionals. 
    
7. From your perspective, what skills or habits are essential for editors today, particularly with academic writing becoming more global and AI tools more accessible? 
   I think that it’s more vital than ever to be comfortable working with tech. We’ve all got used to editing in Word and proofreading on PDFs, of course. But there are so many more tools available now to help us refine how we edit, both to make us more efficient and to prepare documents so that they are easy for the next person in the production process to work with them. 
   
   As attendees of my course on Efficient Editing will know, I’m also a huge fan of batch processing: working on the whole of one task (such as reference formatting, or checking figure captions, or styling headings), then moving on the next one, and so on. I find that doing that, rather than trying to start on the first page and work through to the end, means that my head’s in the right space for working on that particular task, instead of getting distracted by everything else that needs to be done. I work more efficiently and get the job finished sooner. 
    
8. As both an editor and an academic author, what do you think makes for a strong and successful editor–author partnership? 
   Trust. If an author can trust their editor to be sensitive to their writing and to be focusing on conveying their argument in the clearest possible way for the reader, then they will be far more receptive to the editor’s recommendations. And if the editor can trust the author to consider their suggestions with an open mind, then they can be confident to get on with their work without second-guessing whether there’ll be a battle over every change. That’s why I always prefer to have direct contact with the author, so that I can understand where the author is coming from and what they want to achieve, and make sure that I’m hearing their voice correctly. 
    
9. For clients working within academic publishing, what should they look for beyond an editor’s technical skills? What sets truly effective academic editing apart? 
   Many academic editors come from an academic background. That doesn’t necessarily  mean having a PhD, but it does mean having some understanding of how academics think and write in general. Degree courses, particularly the ones that involve reading a lot of academic papers or books, immerse you in the conventions of academic writing. They also make you analyse arguments and see where the weak points are – an invaluable skill for supporting an author in presenting their case strongly. 

Getting to know Hester

10. Do you have any hobbies you're passionate about? 
    I sing in a couple of chamber choirs in Durham. One of them is the volunteer choir that fills in at the cathedral when the main choir isn’t available. It’s such a privilege to sing in that amazing space, one that I’m aware of every time I step into the choir stalls. #
    
    I’m also learning how to ring church bells. I’ve still got a long way to go to be really proficient, but I’m enjoying getting to grips with a totally new skill. 
     
11. All-time favourite book? 
    It’s a terrible cliché, but I think it has to be Pride and Prejudice. I come back to it every few years: I don’t ever get tired of Austen’s sardonic wit. 
     
12. Favourite film? 
    Too many options! Ask me another. Just at the moment The Princess Bride is at the forefront of my mind. 
     
13. Favourite country you’ve been to and why? 
    That’s a really hard one, but I think I’m going to choose Malta. My husband and I went there for our silver wedding holiday, picking it rather at random. I loved every moment of the time there, from coastal walks above the incredibly blue sea, to the astonishingly ancient temples, to strolling around Valetta on a perfect October evening.   
     
14. What would be your three desert island picks? 
    Again – so many options I find it really hard to choose. But I’ll give you: 
    
    Mozart’s Magic Flute, because I had the incredible good luck to be in a Royal Opera performance of it when I was ten (as a peasant child, firmly instructed not to sing). 
    
    ‘My Shot’ from Hamilton. Or ‘Satisfied’. Or ‘The Room Where It Happens’. Or… There’s not a duff song in that musical. 
    
    Herbert Howells’s ‘Take Him Earth for Cherishing’. There had to be some choral music in here, and this is one of my favourite examples of twentieth-century British sacred music. Howells wrote it for JFK’s funeral.