Читать книгу Home SOS - Katherine Brickell - Страница 10

It is difficult to know where to start writing these acknowledgements. I first submitted the proposal for Home SOS in 2012, and eight years on, its journey into print has finally come to an end. This end point has only been made possible through sustained, and much appreciated, professional and personal guidance and support.

The book would not exist without the time, generosity and emotional energy of participants in sharing their stories of domestic life in Cambodia. It has been an honour and a privilege to listen to and write about their intimate experiences in Home SOS. The four studies the book is based on have been made possible by the interpreters and research assistants I have worked with – young and inspiring Cambodians who I am incredibly grateful to for their dedication and kindness. I feel saddened and torn that I cannot name them here given the political sensitivities of the book, which have only intensified over the course of writing it. I am also grateful to the many photographers who have allowed me to use their images free of charge in the book to provide the reader with a visual sense of home precarities unfolding in Cambodia. The joint reporting of Cambodian and international journalists on forced eviction in national newspapers, now shut down or under new management, has been particularly helpful to understanding the frequency and impact of women’s activism in relation to Boeung Kak Lake.

Thank you to the RGS‐IBG Book Series for your expertise and understanding in bringing the book to fruition over such a long period of time. Thank you to Neil Coe and Dave Featherstone for providing constructive feedback at each stage, and to Jacqueline Scott for liaising with me for so many years.

The Leverhulme Trust has been instrumental in enabling the time to write the monograph. I would also like to thank the funders of the research, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Royal Geographical Society. The PhD research that forms the initial basis for Home SOS was supervised by Sylvia Chant at the London School of Economics. Thank you Sylvia for giving me the best start in my academic journey, for believing in me and for showing me what passion and drive can achieve. Since 2008 I have been a researcher at Royal Holloway, University of London and having been home to my scholarly endeavours for over a decade, it is only fitting that I thank my colleagues, both academic and administrative, for the support offered.

In the academic community, I am also honoured to have had ongoing support from geographers who have read and commented on the many iterations of the book. Ruth Craggs is of especial note for having read drafts of each and every chapter, on multiple occasions. Since meeting for the first time at the Las Vegas AAG in 2009, I have rarely felt lonely in academia because of our friendship and our writing side‐by‐side across cafes in London. I am also grateful for the many writing retreats we have been on, memorably battling through snow to get there, and taking trips to garden centres as shared spaces of happiness in which to clear our heads. Writing retreats have been a key way I have managed to push the book substantively forward. Thank you Harriet Hawkins for our cherished writing retreats together, and for being such a positive and reassuring figure in the journey of this book. I have also benefitted from the insightful feedback given to me by James Tyner, Nithya Natarajan, and Laurie Parsons and which extended the book’s ambitions in the final year of its writing. The opportunity for honed thinking has also been facilitated by the feedback shared with me through departmental seminars at the University of Leicester, King’s College London and Durham University.

The long journey of the book’s coming to pass has arisen through personal circumstances that I could never have predicted when I began writing. Soon after returning from maternity leave in 2015 I was diagnosed with a rare cancer, Pseudomyxoma peritonei (PMP), and took medical leave to undertake major surgical and chemotherapy treatment. As the disease is so rare, it is important that I use this opportunity to raise awareness of it (see Macmillan and Cancer Research UK web pages). Throughout my treatment, and in the years since, I have received practical and emotional advice from the PMP community of fellow survivors and its organisation run by carers and patients (https://www.pseudomyxomasurvivor.org). My being here is testament to the NHS and the dedicated surgeons and nurses at the Peritoneal Malignancy Institute at Basingstoke, who I want to sincerely thank. I would like to note Mr Sanjay Dayal, my lead consultant surgeon, and specialist nurse Vicki Pleavin‐Evans for being there, still, at the end of the phone with your wise words. Given the significance of the treatment, I would also like to thank Gary Walker and Crystal Sutar at Grafton Tennis Club for working with me slowly, but surely, every week to build my confidence and trust in my body again.

Home SOS has been a monograph that has been with me on this unexpected journey, offering a sense of continuity and reflection in difficult times. Thank you Ruth Jacob, Ali Moss and Jana Ulph for providing me with a safe space to offload and to laugh; to Ellen Wiles for inspiring me and offering solidarity; and to Christine Widerøe Frenvik for our enduring friendship, which began upon a chance meeting on the streets of Siem Reap so many moons ago. Finally, I would like to warmly thank my family, without whom none of this would have been possible. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my parents and sister for caring for me through years of fieldwork, and offering practical, childcare and emotional support when it mattered most. This book is dedicated to my husband Christian and son Stefan, the loves of my life, from whom I have gained daily encouragement and joy. You have steadfastly held my hand, through my concurrent health challenges and the writing of Home SOS. I simply cannot thank you enough.

Katherine Brickell

Department of Geography, Royal Holloway, University of LondonEgham Hill