Madeline Koch

I have worked on a broad assortment of books, reports, papers, blogs and magazines. My range extends from textbooks to cookbooks, reports on the internet to teachers' guides, marketing materials for law firms, and academic papers on global governance and international relations. In recent years I have worked on books on Canadian foreign policy, the global governance of climate change and health sovereignty in Africa, as well as reports on labour and development and on non-communicable disease.

For many, many years, I have been working with Professor John Kirton and serving as the executive director of the G7 and G20 Research Groups and the BRICS Research Group, as well as the Global Health Diplomacy Program, based at the University of Toronto. I have developed an expertise in global summitry, and you can watch a little video of me talking about our G7 and G20 work at an event organized by the Global Governance Project held at the House of Commons in London, England, in 2018. The GGP is a partnership between these research groups and GT Media, and together we produce special "background publications" for each G7 and G20 summit. Our latest project is a series of publication produced with the support of the World Health Organization, the most recent being Health: A Political Choice – Advancing Indigenous Rights and Well-Being

Along with my colleagues and friends Janet MacMillan, Etty Payne, Katherine Trail, Kelly Lamb and Martin Payne, I am a member of Editing Globally, an international collective of editorial professionals.

I'm based in Toronto, Canada, but — when possible! — I travel all over the place. I have been a member of Editors' Canada since I became a freelance editor in 1990.

Things I Can Do

It's really quite simple. I love copyediting. I love proofreading, too. I focus on making sure that written text is consistently and clearly written. I imagine that working with a copyeditor is liberating for a writer, who can focus on the content and on thinking the big thoughts, because I will look after the details that will make the finished product easy to read and easy to understand. That usually also involves formatting computer files so to sort out headings and clean up tables.

I have worked with many authors whose first language is not English, who may be more comfortable in other languages. I can help make translated texts read as though they were written in English to begin with.

I can also do basic layout, using InDesign — although I hasten to point out that I am by no means a graphic designer.

• What is copyediting?
• It's editing for grammar, spelling, punctuation; checking that terms are used and spelled consistently; checking for internal consistency of facts; standardizing citations; and so on. I also do basic fact checking.
• What is proofreading?
• It's reading text that has been edited and laid out to find incontrovertible errors, to make sure headers and footers are consistent, and also checking that the table of contents has the right headings and page numbers, and other details to make sure the document is as free of errors as possible.

A Few Accomplishments

I have worked on so many different publications! Here is a little selection of the most recent.

Health: A Political Choice — Advancing Indigenous Rights and Well-Being, edited by John Kirton and Ilona Kickbusch, with Catherine Chamberlain

We produced special issue in the Health: A Political Choice series, published by the Global Governance Project, which is a joint project of GT Media, based in the United Kingdom, and the Global Governance Program based at the University of Toronto. Our first was published in 2019, available here, with the subsequent ones published annually. All the Global Governance Program publications are available through here.

G20 India: The 2023 New Delhi Summit, edited by John Kirton and Madeline Koch

Another publication produced by the Global Governance Project, a joint project of GT Media, based in the United Kingdom, and the G20 Research Group based at the University of Toronto. Distributed digitally, with a limited press run, in November 2022, this issue contained bespoke articles by several G20 leaders, plus articles by the heads of international organizations, leading world experts, and G20 scholars. It's downloadable here for anyone interested!

G7 Japan: The 2023 Hiroshima Summit, edited by John Kirton and Madeline Koch

The Global Governance Project and the G7 Research Group based at the University of Toronto published this background book just before the G7 leaders met at the Elmau Summit in June 2022. It's available here.

Reconfiguring the Global Governance of Climate Change, by John Kirton, Ella Kokotsis and Brittaney Warren

Published by Routledge, this scholarly work built on an earlier book I worked on by the same authors, The Global Governance of Climate Chagne: G7, G20 and UN Leadership.

Howgate Publishing

I've copyedited, proofread and/or laid out several books produced by Howgate Publishing. One recent layout project was Something Rotten: Land Command in the 21st Century, by Jim Storr, published in 2022. Other Howgate titles I've worked on include, Air Forces: The Next Generation, edited by Amit Gupta, Violent Non-State Actors in Modern Conflict and Fragile and Failing States: Challenges and Responses, both edited by David Brown, Donette Murray, Malte Riemann, Norma Rossi and Martin A. Smith.

Literary Review of Canada

From 1998 until 2017, I was the production manager and copy editor of the LRC, which publishes articles and book reviews on a wide range of topics, some excellent poetry and eye-catching art. The September 2017 issue was the last one worked on.

Things Clients and Colleagues Have Said

Contact Me

Ask me anything!