Justin S.

Rigorously sourced research writing, grounded in fieldwork — every claim traceable to a primary source. I'm an anthropologist, editor, and research writer with 18+ years across academic, policy, nonprofit, and media work. I turn dense, complex, or sensitive material into clear, accurate writing a non-specialist can actually use: reports, explainers, field studies, literature reviews, grant narratives, curriculum, and high-level editorial rewrites. My core training is ethnographic — the qualitative, on-the-ground work most research can't reach. I do in-depth interviewing, participant observation, and applied and organizational ethnography: getting close to how people actually live and work, and rendering it faithfully and on the record. Eighteen months of field research in Papua New Guinea, and applied research alongside communities living next to large industrial and extractive projects, taught me to find sources, earn trust, and represent people accurately. That work rests on strict sourcing discipline. Every factual claim traces to a named source — a peer-reviewed study, government or agency data, a public filing, a named interview — in original wording throughout. I spent four years as a Research Associate at the University of Michigan's Center for Social Solutions, on the future of work and the legacies of slavery, separating what the data supports from how interested parties frame it. I also work fluently with AI as a research tool, held to strict human fact-checking and provenance. This is where the ethnographic and the analytical meet: the interviewing, verification, and judgment are exactly the human work software can't do. I've applied it on large-scale, multi-country research and reporting (AI-assisted analysis held to a human grading framework, delivered publication-ready) and on consulting briefs that condense dozens of conflicting sources into a single ranked, decision-bearing synthesis. Areas of focus - Qualitative & ethnographic research — in-depth interviewing, participant observation, applied & organizational ethnography, systems mapping - Research writing & cross-disciplinary synthesis — messy, multi-source material into clear, ranked, decision-bearing analysis, every claim's provenance kept - Fact-checking, source verification, and information literacy - AI-assisted research & reporting at scale — large multi-country report work with a grading framework and publication-ready editorial assessment - Editorial leadership — peer-review management, manuscript development, and rewriting across 25+ years; co-founded academic journals, independent presses, and research initiatives - Curriculum and educational content design - Grant narratives and policy-facing explainers - Clients come to me for fieldwork-grounded qualitative research, exceptional synthesis across disciplines, authoritative writing built on real sources, careful handling of complex or sensitive subjects, and editorial work that sharpens clarity, structure, and voice — delivered on deadline. Whether the material is a body of literature, an organization, or a pile of conflicting sources, the work is the same: make sense of a complex system and render it so someone can actually act on it.