Letters From the Editor
Hi! I am Hana, one of Polyphony’s co-editor-in-chief.
As a new Co-editor-in-chief, my first and the most important job was re-creating a Polyphony community with new members joined from this year. For me, it was an experience closely connected to this issue’s theme, “Homing.” Usually, it simply means the ability to return home. But in this issue, we decided to use another meaning of this word as a verb: a social process of creating “home”. We took this concept from a research project about international migration, HOMInG, led by sociologist Paolo Boccagni and his research team. The research project does not understand home as just a physical place. Rather, in their idea, home also includes our “emotional and meaningful kind of relationship.” It is a relationship created based on how we feel living there, like a sense of belonging, affection or feeling of confinement. So, “Homing” is a process to create somewhere that you can feel a sense of belonging, being included, or simply feel at home. Like the Polyphony team for me! We thought this kind of experience would be an interesting writing theme for people around us. In our environment where people with various backgrounds come and live together, we often face questions of where to belong, how to create a home here, and so on. And the guess was right: authors had very interesting pieces reflecting how we create, question, and wonder about home! Their voices are diverse, never unified, but they create very nice places here for us to discover our “homing” experiences. I sincerely appreciate the support and work done by our polyphony team to complete such a good issue; Kento, Ai, Aidan, Alex, Alma, Mai, Pan Pan, Aisyah, Nhi, and Xaverius. Thank you so much for helping me and Snow to resurrect Polyphony during all the chaos! In my opinion, life itself is a continuous process of ”Homing.” It always happens, not only for students like us, but also for everyone. I hope this issue can connect to your unique voices and experiences of “Homing” too, beyond our differences. Because this is Polyphony, where many lives and voices including yours are entangled like beautiful music.
Hello! My name is Snow, and I am one of the co-editor-in-chief of Polyphony. Working on this issue has been a process of learning for me. When we began, we had a
possible theme, a new team, and many ideas, but we did not yet know what the finished issue would look like. We simply started talking, planning, and putting everything
together one step at a time. Through this process, I came to understand what Polyphony means to me. As its name suggests, it is a place for many different voices. They do not always have to agree or tell the same kind of story. What matters is that each voice has the space to be heard. Bringing Polyphony back also felt connected to “Homing” in its own way. We were not only returning to something that already existed; we were also creating a new place for it within our student community. I especially want to thank Kento, Ai, Alex, Alma, Mai, Pan Pan, Aisyah, Nhi, Aidan and Xaverius. Everyone worked incredibly hard to complete this issue while managing hectic schedules, classes, responsibilities, and many unexpected challenges. I know it was not always easy to find the time and energy, so I am truly grateful for the care and effort each of you gave to Polyphony. This issue would not have been possible without you.
This will be my last issue as co-editor-in-chief, which makes its completion especially meaningful to me. However, this is not goodbye. I still hope to remain part of Polyphony in the future, to support it and watch it continue to grow. I am excited to see how future members will shape it and make
it their own. Thank you for opening this issue and joining us at the beginning of a new chapter. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed creating it.
