The longer I spend studying gender and war, the more I realise how central my own experience of military service is to my understanding and interpretation of what I research. I started to incorporate reflexive writing into my study to capture this relationship between my and my research and to help me to negotiate the transition from military engineer to postgraduate researcher, and in particular the experience of having been a woman in the military. I have started to embrace creative methods for understanding and sharing these reflections through the following projects:

(Wo)man of war. I entered an image and caption from my deployment to Afghanistan in the Images of Research competition at the University of Bath in 2017 and was delighted to be awarded Best Image.

She’ll Hold Her Own. This is a collaboration with my husband who has written a folk song based on my experience of leaving the military and produced an accompanying music video. I have been awarded funding from the Public Engagement Seed Fund at the University of Bath for a music recording session to improve the sound quality of this film.

Uniformly Served: Veterans in Conversation. This is a project to bring together a group of local veterans to explore their reflections on gender and military service and to produce a short film. I have been awarded funding from the South West Doctoral Training Programme Impact Fund to support this project.