I’m extremely happy with this one. This came to life from a rough paper I presented at University College London’s Urban Lab, but it really took shape through the peer review process at Antipode. I’m going to be honest here: there was a lot of tough feedback, and it definitely threw me for a loop. It took a bit of time for me to recover composure enough to start thinking about how to address the problems and improve.

The reason I’m sharing this is because I really believe in the value of peer feedback. It’s not easy, especially if you’re so emotionally invested in your work that you start identifying with it.

One of the things I emphasize most often with PhD students is the importance of taking the feedback with the understanding that this is not an attack on you, but rather a concrete effort to help your work improve. Once I got that through my head, my own PhD journey became loads easier. It actually became fun! It was my ego getting in the way, before.

Anyway, so even with this mindset, the feedback from the amazing peer reviewers at Antipode landed pretty hard. But as I worked through it all, I felt my enthusiasm return. I responded to every single sentence of feedback. Seriously – I sent them a spreadsheet. It was very long. And with them pushing, I finally uncovered what I was really trying to say.

What this speaks to, I think, is the care and quality that the Antipode editors and reviewers bring to their work. We know that so much of academic labor is invisible and too often unrewarded. So here, in my own little space, I wanted to write not about me and my article, but rather about the editors and reviewers. Because even though it’s my name there, it wouldn’t be there without them. I feel incredibly grateful.

Read on Antipode here, if you have institutional access. (I swear I’m working on a grant that will allow me to go Open Access… this all takes so much time)

And if you don’t have institutional access, you can find a postprint from my department here.

As always, thanks for reading. I hope you enjoy it.