Madeline Koch

I have worked on all sorts of things — books on the global governance of climate change, artificial intelligence and the military, and international relations theory; reports on accountable mining; cookbooks; marketing materials for law firms; academic papers on political science.

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 Trinity College in University of Toronto. I have developed an expertise in global summitry, and you can watch me talking about our G7 and G20 work in a little video from an event organized by the Global Governance Project held at the House of Commons in London, England, back 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 as well as a series on Health: A Political Choice; in 2024 we also published Financing a Just Transition: Transforming Funding, Tackling Climate Change, which was a fascinating new project.

Along with my colleagues and friends Janet MacMillan, Etty Payne, Martin Payne, Kelly Lamb, Erin Brenner, Aalap Trivedi and Ayesha Chari, I am a member of Editing Globally, an international collective of editorial professionals.

I can most often – but not always –  be found in Toronto. 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 often also involves formatting computer files 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 — Building Resilience and Trust, edited by John Kirton and Ilona Kickbusch

Our most recent edition 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. They are usually launched at the World Health Summit in Berlin every October. Our first was published in 2019, available here, with the subsequent ones published annually. All the Global Governance Program publications are available here.

G20 Brazil: The 2024 Rio 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 2024, 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 Canada: The 2025 Kananaskis 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 in Canada's glorious Kananaskis in June 2025. 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 fascinating project was War Without Oversight: Why We Need Humans on the Battlefield, by Paddy Walker, published in 2024 – I learned a lot. Another enlightening one was by Dennis Vincent titled The S-Calm Model: The Application of Ethical Leadership in the Military. Other Howgate titles I've worked on include A Risk Too Far: A Psychological Autopsy of the Planning for Arnhem, by Gary Buck, and The Western Way of War, by Peter Roberts.

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!