Dr Pooja Sawrikar
Research Consultant & Thesis Editor
SITE NAME
I launched this website in 2020 after being denied promotion to Associate Professor after two decades of service to academia, which is why it is called ‘Promoting Women in Academia’ (PWIA). Shortly after, I discovered that only 2% of Full Professors in Australia are women of colour. In 2022, I archived the original content and now use the site to list the services I offer as an independent research consultant including thesis editing, as well as the various work I have done rooted in my commitment to my profession’s values - ethics, rigour, and truth - and not acquiescence to the corporate managerialism of neoliberal academia. At the time I revamped the site, I chose not to change the name in honour of my struggle of racism and sexism in a capitalistic system of knowledge production.
NEOLIBERALISM
Over the 26 years that I studied or worked at three Australian universities - 1: The University of Sydney (1995-2005); 2: University of New South Wales (2005-2014), and 3: Griffith University (2010-2020) - I watched neoliberalism destroy the sector I loved. In that time, I completed my B. Science (1995-1998), Honours (Psychology, 1999), PhD (Psychology, 2000-2003), and Postdoctoral Fellowship (Social Work/Social Policy, 2007-2010); worked full-time at the Social Policy Research Centre; worked part-time teaching as a parent with three stepchildren and one child; attracted external grants and worked on projects worth $4 million+; taught 10,000+ students (Psychology, Research Methods); published 60+ peer reviewed journal articles, reports, books, etc.; supervised postgraduate students and became a journal editor; and peer reviewed research manuscripts and prestigious federal grant proposals for the Australian Research Council (ARC). My bio has more. Being denied promotion after all this labour - a significant part that went unpaid due to systemic wage theft (to the value of ~$118,000) - finally broke me to leave.
SOVEREIGNTY
After asking for a voluntary redundancy package in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I then went on to reform academic publishing by creating Scholar Freedom. Painfully, I discovered that most researchers would rather enable an unfair system than help change it, so I decided to close that site on 30 June 2026 (the Annual Reports are accessible below). I now prioritise my intellectual and financial sovereignty by protecting my academic freedom and right to fair pay. Most of all, I want the genocide of Palestinians to end. Anyone who chokes to find the words that it is not ok to mass slaughter a civilian population is not someone I will work with.
Services
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I know that you will be exhausted from years of hard work but also excited for what lies ahead, and will give you care and encouragement in the final stages of your dissertation journey. I bring 25+ years of experience in higher education, so will typeset, copyedit, and proofread your thesis to give it the final polish and refinement that reflects the pride you take in your work. As a previous research supervisor and current thesis marker, I can also flag comments that markers may make, giving you and your supervisory team the chance to address these prior to submission and reduce the chances of attracting ‘major revisions required’ - and all supervisors so far have appreciated the final set of informed eyes I bring. Your thesis may be an Honours, Masters, or PhD, and you will receive respect as a knowledge holder and creator. Each thesis I read gives me great pleasure as I learn from the upcoming generations about how talented the pool of researchers are, and what the latest knowledge advancements are. I specialise in the social sciences and APA 7 referencing. When you email for a quote, please include your word count and the timeframe you require your document returned by.
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Academic publishing is serious business (and I have a lot to say about this). However, when you come to me looking for editing assistance for your research articles I will work with you to make sure it conforms with the journal’s style guides and expectations. One of my abilities is to turn a long sentence into a short one! Journal articles have tight word limits, and my editing will preserve your intended meaning and breadth of content in the fewest words possible. I can do this because I am a well established writer across 60+ academic books, articles, reports etc. that have been cited over 1,500 times and downloaded over 60,000 times (as at Dec 2020), but also because I am not you! I bring a keen eye observant of detail that is not attached to the intellectual and emotional labour that underpins it. It can be liberating for writers to pass it to someone else and tidy up its preciseness and conciseness. It’s a joy for me to see your document take neat shape, and all comments and suggestions are made in ways that respect how much you’ve done already while bridging the gap I know journals will expect as a previous journal editor myself.
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If you would like to engage me as a research consultant, I’ll be happy to see how I can help your work. I can advise on matters relating to neoliberal academia, racism and sexism in academia, and child maltreatment across cultures. I can also talk about the new cognitive bias I have identified - the ‘sense of agency’ bias - the result of which means that accountability for injustice is moral not objective. Please note that if you are looking to engage me for contract research, the final output cannot involve deletions or changes of my work without my approval (yes, learned the hard way from prior IP theft from “colleagues”). What I love best is working with fellow experts with whom I can engage in a deep knowledge exchange, so that I too grow in my intellectual and emotional capacities as we each share what we know. I look forward to meeting you and working together to make sure that rigorous research informs the practices and policies your organisation wishes to implement.
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This is a recently new option I now offer within my service range; responding to requests from PhD scholars whose supervisors may not have the full necessary expertise the thesis covers between them. Please get in touch if this sounds like you, and we can discuss your needs further. I will work with your primary and secondary supervisor to ensure the mentoring team around you are clear about their respective roles. As someone who would only be working with you and your main supervisors occasionally throughout your candidature, I can provide feedback on draft thesis chapters as an example of my contribution (by publication or otherwise). Universities prefer their PhD scholars to have supervisors that are salaried staff. However, these staff have workloads that meet criteria for modern slavery which can compromise the time and attention that HDR (Higher Degree by Research) students require to become competent professionals in their future. If funds are available for occasional external PhD supervision, I’ll be happy to provide a third voice.
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If you are looking for a keynote speaker on innovation and disruption in academic publishing, please get in touch. I’ll be happy to hear from you because your very contact will tell me that you wish to place the voices, needs, and experiences of researchers at the heart of research dissemination. Researchers have become modern slaves in neoliberal academia, and too many convenient blinkers are in place protecting the status quo and those who benefit from it at the expense of people who endure harms, injustices, and atrocities the sector is yet to be fully answerable to. After taking the time to listen to discomforting things, you can become part of the change for good. My other area of expertise is cultural competency in the social services sector, so if you are looking to help make your workforce in social work and other cognate areas more aware of racism and sexism and how to use this knowledge compassionately and ethically to improve the wellbeing of clients from migrant communities, your contact is also welcome.
Resources
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After enduring 65 rejections of 13 manuscripts in the last 2 years of working before leaving the academic sector (in 2020), I knew my voice was being silenced in the traditional peer review system because the gatekeepers had too much power to question my knowledge and credibility. When they did let me in, it cost me thousands of dollars in open access (OA) fees which as a part-time working mother I did not have. Alongside the nearly $118,000 in wage theft, it was clear that academia was not centrally built for its academics - it was built for business, and money and reputation ruled its decisions. I built Scholar Freedom so that researchers whose voices like mine are silenced and erased in the traditional system had somewhere to go - their labour, knowledge, and findings could get visibility, and they FINALLY had the opportunity to shift the money currently going to the publishing fat cats (at $25+ billion p.a. revenue) back into their pocket since they did the work and have earned and deserve it. Unfortunately, after 5.5 years of being open it was time to call it for what it was: a failed prototype. The site has now been archived, but contact from fellow left-leaning system reformers looking to collaborate are warmly welcome.
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My book Working with ethnic minorities and across cultures in Western child protection systems is stocked in 200+ libraries across the globe. It can be used by researchers, child protection departments, and non-government organisations (NGOs) to inform their teaching, practice, and policy. In a book review by Pam Freeman (2019), she said: “This comprehensive work is relevant to any academic readers of social work practice where cultural knowledge, policy and practices are vital components in decision making. It is coherently structured, and behoves practitioners to work on a subjective ‘case by case’ child centred and family-focused basis. It is scholarly work, with child welfare at heart. It interweaves theory and practice in a balanced critical way but is also very accessible to the reader who may have faced similar cultural dilemmas. Whilst any discourse on this topic can be politically sensitive, and controversial, the author argues that ignoring differences between human groups in favour of notions of commonality does not always provide equity in cultural safety. This stimulating book is highly recommended for social work practice but also opens up a more general reflective debate about the need for social change and empowerment of all citizens.”
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Have you wondered why so few ‘culturally and linguistically diverse’ (CALD) victims/survivors of child sexual abuse access your services? If so, you can learn more about what’s holding them back from speaking up - the barriers may be deeper than you realise. Once you know what they are, you can deliver a safe and compassionate service to someone who walks through your door and may have no one else to turn to. There are 6 modules you can work through at your own pace. The program suits practitioners such as social workers, counselors, psychologists, and GPs, and can also be used by researchers, policy-makers, and CALD communities. On completion, you will gain confidence in your knowledge about child sexual abuse and cultural diversity, competency in ethical and informed decision-making, and a deeper understanding about yourself. The modules cover appropriate terminology for this group, making sense of ‘objective’ prevalence data, cross-cultural differences in susceptibility to myths like stranger danger, cultural competency within service organisations, working effectively with interpreters, and navigating white privilege and patriarchy.
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Academia is my true love! Don’t be fooled by how critical I am of it. Rage is grief, and grief is love. I will never forget that first day in 1995 when I walked onto campus as a new undergraduate student, and just knew I was home in my tribe. I could feel the electricity of what was possible. Every kind of person surrounded me, and it was a utopia of diversity in thought. The learning potential was boundless. But that was over 30 years ago. Something drastic happened in that time. It’s called: neoliberalism. The institution’s implicit hierarchy, which I was too naïve to see at the time, became impossible to miss. Manageralism took full hold, and academics went from respected, trusted, and well paid members of society to philosophers apparently wasting taxpayers’ dollars who now need to justify their contribution to society by how much research grant money they can attract. We were no longer a public institution that stood for education and symbolised opportunity, we were a business hiding behind a false ‘not-for-profit’ status. My blog tracks this devastation.
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My original ‘PWIA Consultancy’ website designed in 2020 was set up to provide services to universities to help them rectify sexist discrimination in promotion (i.e. recognition and remuneration). Not one university took it up, so I closed it after two years. All the information about that original service has been archived for reading purposes only (i.e. the service is no longer available). This has been done to honour the emotional and intellectual labour, and workplace trauma and injustice, that underpinned the service design. Only ~2% of Professors in Australian universities are women of colour, when they make up ~12% of the population. It is this stark under-representation that makes the wage theft universities perpetrate against everyone additionally racist and sexist. I wanted my just reward of an earned title, but not by bending my professional values or accepting the indignity that I should have to prove my worth more because I’m a brown woman. Overall, the content allows women (and men) to better understand the system they are working in, and therefore better able to make informed and empowered decisions about their career planning.
Scholar Freedom
Founder’s journey
I poured everything that I had been forced to learn about neoliberal academia over 20+ years into Scholar Freedom. I began with wide-eyed naivety, defended my creation against naysayers in the middle, and finally relinquished hope for change at the end. My Annual Reports track my journey of becoming and then unbecoming the founder of the only academic publishing platform that had the courage to argue against the “full open access” movement because it depends on the false assumption that the labour and equipment of university research is fully taxpayer-funded. In Australia, <30% of research is publicly-funded and all universities perpetrate wage theft. This means that for ~70% of research produced through Australian universities, the only reason that warrants them being ‘open access’ (i.e. free to the public) is a philosophical one. This is why Scholar Freedom was built to support non-author-paywalled research if that’s what the authors choose. The full website is now archived here.