Cathy Hannabach
Founder and CEO
Dr. Cathy Hannabach (she/her) is the founder and CEO of Ideas on Fire, where she helps interdisciplinary academics write and publish awesome texts, enliven public conversations, and create more just worlds.
In 2009, she founded Ideas on Fire to harness the collective expertise of interdisciplinary PhDs and provide the editing, indexing, and consulting help scholars need to create an impact.
She hosts the Imagine Otherwise podcast, which highlights those bridging art, activism, and academia to build more just futures.
She is the author of Blood Cultures: Medicine, Media, and Militarisms (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), which traces the cultural history of blood as it both enabled twentieth-century US imperialism and was creatively transformed by feminist, anticolonial, anticapitalist, and queer artists and activists, and Book Marketing for Academics (Ideas on Fire, 2016), which teaches you how to harness your resources, skills, and time to build your author platform and get the word out about your awesome new book.
Mentorship is a core value of her work across organizations, aiming to foster strong pipelines of publishing professionals and cultivate multigenerational legacies within organizations.
She designed and directs the LGBTQ+ Editors Association Mentorship Program and the Ideas on Fire Editorial Professional Development Series, which deliver personalized career mentorship to participants across editing areas, geographic regions, and identities. Both programs identify and nurture emerging editors and indexers, equipping them with the skills and support needed to thrive, while helping seasoned professionals share the wealth of their expertise to build more inclusive and expansive editorial futures and legacies.
She received her PhD in cultural studies from the University of California, Davis and her BA in gender and women’s studies from the University of California, Berkeley.
She lives in Palmyra, New Jersey, where in her spare time you can find her strolling through nature preserves and botanical gardens, cooking up a storm, or nerding out over plants and fungi.