Staff Listing

As the Writing Coordinator, I assist with the facilitation of the tutoring program, including scheduling, social media, and tutor mentorship. I also deliver several online workshops to help develop undergraduate students' skills as they begin their journeys into university-level writing. If you're looking to make an appointment with me, I can tutor both undergraduate and master's level students. Though my expertise is in the Arts, I have experience tutoring students from all faculties at Laurier and particularly enjoy working with students in Education and Business.

I completed my undergraduate degree in film studies and history in 2019 and my OGS funded Master's of English in 2020, both at Laurier. After getting involved with Laurier Writing Services through the Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts (LUJA), I joined the team as a peer tutor in 2018. While holding my position as a graduate writing tutor, I enjoyed working in an additional capacity as a Laurier International tutor, where I worked closely with many English language learners and intercultural communicators. After finishing my Master’s of English, I joined Writing Services as the Writing Coordinator in a full-time capacity.

I earned my BA in Writing and Communication Arts from Indiana Wesleyan University in 1998, my Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Antioch University of Los Angeles in 2006, and my Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from University of Waterloo in 2021. I’ve been teaching writing since 2006 at the post-secondary level in addition to providing writing support in writing centres at Gettysburg College and University of Waterloo.

As the Brantford Writing Consultant, I work with faculty to develop general and discipline-specific writing support at both the curricular and classroom level. Primarily, this support comes by way of collaboration with faculty on writing assignments, assessments, and in-class writing workshops.
I also support graduate student writing via 50-minute appointments. During these individual writing appointments, I provide help at every stage of the writing process from invention, to drafting, to revisions.

In tandem with my fellow writing consultants, I help lead our writing tutor program – with special focus on the Brantford tutors. This involves recruiting, hiring, training, supervising, and mentoring our team of exceptional undergraduate and graduate student tutors.

My academic research focuses on rhetoric and composition, specifically how to leverage both translingual and second language writing theory to provide effective writing support for translingual students.

Wright-Taylor, C. In Review. Bilingual Always: Second Language Writing’s Influence on Canadian Writing Studies.Discourse and Writing/Redactologie.

Wright-Taylor, C. (2021). “Sorry If My Words Aren’t Right”: Writing Studies’ Partnership with Second Language Writing to Support Translingual Students in the Anglo-Canadian Classroom. UWSpace. http://hdl.handle.net/10012/17684

As a writing consultant, I work with faculty as well as undergraduate and graduate students to design and deliver university-wide writing support. I collaborate with faculty to design discipline-specific writing assignments, and I deliver in-class writing workshops. I have disciplinary expertise in writing in Business, Economic, Science, and Social Work. I enjoy consulting with graduate and undergraduate students during 50-minute individual appointments, guiding students to become more proficient and confident writers. I also deliver scholarship writing workshops for graduate students. With James Southworth, I co-lead the tutor training program, hiring, training, supervising, and mentoring the Writing Services' team of undergraduate and graduate writing tutors.

Before beginning my role as a writing consultant, I was Assistant Professor of Academic Writing in Laurier's Faculty of Arts. I completed my Ph.D. in English and Film Studies at Laurier in 2014, and held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard, where I did research in the history of women's writing and British Romanticism. I am an experienced post-secondary educator who has taught writing and literary studies at all levels. For over a decade, I also worked at writing centres at Laurier and the University Alberta in teaching and research roles.

Sharpe, A. In press. Five entries on novels by Mary Charlton and Thomas Clio Rickman. The Cambridge Guide to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, 1660-1820. Ed. April London. Cambridge University Press.

Ty, E. and Sharpe, A. (2017). “Mary Hays and the Didactic Novel in the 1790s.” Didactic Novels and British Women’s Writing, 1790-1820. Ed. Hilary Havens. Routledge. pp. 90-105.

Sharpe, A. (2014). “Margaret Hale’s Books and Flowers: North and South’s Paratextual Dialogues with Felicia Hemans.” Victorian Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Victorian Studies, vol. 40, no.1, pp. 197-209.

Sharpe, A. (2013). “The Case of the Wandering Uterus: Coma, the Medical Thriller and the Woman Doctor-Detective.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 220-38.

Sharpe, A. (2012). “Orphan, Embroiderer, Insect, Queen: The ‘Elegant and Ingenious’ Art of Being Ellena in Radcliffe’s The Italian (1796).” European Romantic Review, vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 123-40.

As a writing consultant, I work with faculty to develop writing curriculum and provide in-class writing instruction that is tailored to the learning outcomes of the course. I also work with undergraduate and graduate students in one-on-one appointments to assist them with their learning of discipline-specific writing conventions.

I also co-lead the writing tutoring program. This involves recruiting, hiring, training, supervising, and mentoring a team of exceptional undergraduate and graduate student tutors.

Finally, I conduct academic research, which primarily focuses on the interconnection between critical thinking and writing studies. I also engage in collaborative research projects with faculty.

I began as a writing consultant at the Laurier Writing Centre in June of 2015. I completed my PhD at the University of Western Ontario in 2014 with an expertise in moral psychology and ethics. While at Western, I taught courses in the Philosophy department and was an instructor for the Teaching Assistant Training Program at the Teaching Support Centre. In 2019, I completed the TESOL certification (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) at Renison College, University of Waterloo.

Peer-reviewed journal articles

Southworth, J. (2022). Bridging critical thinking and transformative learning: The role of perspective taking. Theory and Research in Education. https://doi.org/10.1177/14778785221090853

Southworth, J. (2021). A perspective-taking theory of open-mindedness: Confronting the challenge of motivated reasoning. Educational Theory, 71(5), 589-607. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12497

Southworth, J. (2020). How argumentative writing stifles open-mindedness. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 20(2), 207-227. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022220903426

Chaktsiris, M. & Southworth, J. (2019). Thinking beyond writing development in peer review. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 10(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.5206/cjsotl-rcacea.2019.1.8005

Southworth, J. (2016). The passional nature and the will to believe. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society: A Quarterly Journal in American Philosophy, 52(1), 62-78. https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/625131

Opinion Articles

Southworth, J. (2022). Will COVID forever flip learning. University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/will-covid-forever-flip-learning/

Southworth, J. (2021). A skills-based approach to academic integrity. University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/a-skills-based-approach-to-academic-integrity/

Southworth, J. (2020). The problem with argumentative writing. University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/the-problem-with-argumentative-writing/

Southworth, J. (2018). The value of the op-ed as a writing assignment. University Affairs. https://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/value-op-ed/

As a writing consultant, I develop and deliver in-class writing workshops across disciplines for undergraduate and graduate students. I work alongside faculty to create discipline-specific writing assignments and assist with the overall writing design of their courses. I also work with undergraduate and graduate students in one-on-one appointments to address their specific concerns and help them build strong writing skills. Additionally, I lead a variety of external workshops across disciplines for undergraduate and graduate students on academic writing skills to help students thrive in undergraduate programs and succeed at the graduate level.

Before joining the Writing Services team, I completed my PhD in the Department of History at Western University in 2018. My doctoral research focused on Canadian and American social history by examining the history of immigration, race, ethnicity, and transnational social movements in North America. I am an experienced educator and previously taught history at Western and Trent University.

Worsfold, Elliot. “Gatekeeping in the Lutheran Church: Ethnicity, Generation, and Religion in 1960s Toronto.” In Being German Canadian: History, Memory, Generations, edited by Alexander Freund, 140-162. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2021.

Worsfold, Elliot. “Cast Down, Not Forsaken: The Second World War Experience and Memory of German-Canadian Lutherans in Southwestern Ontario.” Ontario History 106, no. 1 (2014): 57-76.

Worsfold, Elliot. “Eastern Ontario’s Commemoration of the North-West Resistance, 1885-1939.” Canadian Military History 22, no. 4 (2013): 3-16.