Hal Swindall holds a master's in English and a PhD in comparative literature. For 25 years, he has taught, edited, and researched in East Asia besides scholarly visits to Europe. Presently he works as an English teacher trainer at the University of Malaya in Malaysia, mainly teaching academic writing and research to graduates and supervising TESL theses. Hal has also designed and conducted English academic writing workshops for non-native English speakers, and is performing mixed-method research in this area. Besides all that, he has 25 years of experience in a variety of editing and has helped many scholars publish in major journals. He believes in giving every aspiring researcher the attention and help they need to realize their goals. Hal's languages include French and Italian, besides Chinese, and he has published on such wide-ranging topics as Buddhist art and Chinese poetry, but his dissertation research was on late nineteenth-century artistic prose.