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Chapter IV
Meet Ryan
Research Consultant | Doctoral Mentor | Linguist
Scholarly Background
Ryan possesses an international academic background shaped by study at leading research universities in the United States and Europe. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, after which he was awarded a competitive scholarship to pursue graduate studies in linguistics and neuroscience at University College London. His master’s thesis, which examined the structure of the French pronominal and clitic system, was subsequently published.
Following his studies in the United Kingdom, Ryan was accepted as a doctoral candidate at the University of Amsterdam. Although in residence at the Netherlands’ leading research university, he pursued his doctorate as a non-traditional scholar, conducting his research while traveling between Baltimore and the Netherlands.
Ryan’s doctoral research investigates the epiphenomenon of grammaticalization—a mechanism of language change—through comparative case studies drawn from Hungarian and the Kwa languages of West Africa. His dissertation advances a novel theoretical framework modeling how children construct new grammars as a function of the available mappings between sound and meaning.
This work offers a new perspective on language change grounded in acquisition and cognition, and serves as a foundation for future research examining the emergence of grammatical systems across languages.
Research & Methodological Expertise
Ryan received formal training in neuroimaging techniques during his graduate studies at University College London, an experience that grounded his approach to research design, measurement, and statistical reasoning. Despite this initial quantitatively-oriented pedigree, Ryan has developed deep expertise in qualitative research design and analysis across a range of methodological traditions.
He is particularly well-versed in phenomenological approaches and is known for his ability to demystify the often opaque and underspecified heuristics that govern qualitative coding, thematic analysis, and phenomenological reduction. His work emphasizes methodological clarity, analytic transparency, and alignment between research questions, data, and interpretive claims.
Ryan is especially adept at mentoring doctoral candidates in the selection of an appropriate research design through an explicitly alignment- and data-centered lens. In non-traditional doctoral programs, candidates are frequently compelled—often prematurely—to commit to research designs that do not coherently align with their problem statements, purposes, or research questions. The result is too often a study that is difficult to implement, analytically unwieldy, and challenging to interpret. Ryan’s coaching intervenes precisely at this juncture, helping candidates design studies that are both methodologically rigorous and practically feasible.
Professional & Community Engagement
Ryan brings over fifteen years of experience spanning academia, research consulting, and the evaluation of large language models. His professional career began in academic support services, where he coordinated tutoring centers, placement testing, and disability support initiatives—work that grounded his understanding of institutional structures and student support at scale.
Following his return to Baltimore after his studies at University College London, Ryan taught extensively at the undergraduate and graduate levels, cultivating a deep commitment to pedagogy and academic mentorship. He later spent several years in the technology sector, applying his background in linguistics to the evaluation of large language models. It was during this period that Ryan recognized the absence of serious, methodologically-grounded support for doctoral candidates in non-traditional programs—a realization that ultimately led to the creation of Dissertation Demystified.
Ryan’s professional endeavors are unified by a commitment to intellectual rigor and the transformation of scholarly lives. An unapologetically old-school academic—unafraid to quote the great Greek and Roman philosophers—he seeks to hold non-traditional doctoral education to higher standards and to the centuries-established aims of erudition, the perpetuation of academic inquiry, and the generation of knowledge.
Beyond academia, Ryan is an active figure in Baltimore’s Polish and cultural community. He serves as Financial Secretary of the Polish National Alliance and as a board member of the National Katyń Memorial Foundation. In these roles, he regularly liaises with diplomatic representatives and organizes cultural events and galas honoring Baltimore’s Polish heritage and broader cultural legacy.
Outside his professional and civic commitments, Ryan is a devoted admirer of classical music, an accomplished chef and mixologist, and an amateur calligrapher. In quieter moments, he is engaged in a long-term creative magnum opus involving the developmen of a language and the composition of an epic poem written entirely in that language.