Pittsburgh, Summer School at the University of Otago campus), that we
were running during our stay in Dunedin.
We worked on a part of the writing of this book while we were affiliated
as Invited Researchers at the National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku)
in Osaka, Japan, for April, May, and June 2014, and we express especial
thanks to our sponsors, Director-General Ken-Ichi Sudo and Associate
Prof. Isao Hayashi, for assistance on our Disaster Anthropology work.
We thank the Office of the Dean, Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences,
University of Pittsburgh, for continuing support, with special thanks to
Dean N. John Cooper for the interest he has always taken in our scholarly
work and field studies, including in Northern Ireland and County
Donegal in the Republic of Ireland, where among other topics we have
investigated the phenomenon of The Ulster Scots identity and language.
We also worked on this manuscript while we were visiting as Guest
Professors at the University of Augsburg, Germany, in 2015 and 2016,
teaching Medical Anthropology. We want to thank all of our kind sponsors
and helpers in Augsburg, especially Prof. Guenther Kronenbitter, Dr. Ina
Hagen-Jeske, and Dr. Alma Duràn-Merk, of the Department of European
Ethnology; and also in 2016 the Centre for Interdisciplinary Health
Studies.
Thefinal pieces of this book were completed and the manuscript was
made ready to send to the press while we were researching the June 2016
Referendum in the United Kingdom (UK) to exit from or stay in the
European Union (EU). We have worked for decades in the Republic of
Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, so it was especially moving to be
staying in the three locations in June, July, and August of 2016, during
and after the vote for the UK to exit the EU. We have been following the
economic, political, and social impacts of the shifting shape and face of
Europe today and what this means for the future. The surprise vote in
favor of leaving the EU shocked many people and set a huge task for the
‘Brexiteers’, who had played a leading role in advocating this new path-
way, and those political leaders who also had to step in and handle the
unanticipated consequences of the vote. It was evident that the turn of
events demanded a great deal of creativity of an imaginative and mindful
sort for the future. A mindful anthropology would also be needed to study
this situation in all its ramifying complexities.
x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS