We thought it would be useful to put into context how the Military Afterlives Project came about. Within the research world there is a long period of time before such projects like this get off the ground. The starting point for us was when Sarah and myself attended the same conference in 2013 called Research and the War Veteran. We got chatting over coffee and those posh biscuits you get at these events during one of the breaks. Sarah is a university lecturer working within critical military studies. I am a war veteran, political activist, and independent researcher. There was something about that first meeting that encouraged us to meet again to share our knowledge and in my case, my passion for trying to highlight the veterans and families voice within research evocatively and differently. Several weeks later I travelled down to the University of Exeter campus at Penryn, Cornwall, with my hard drive in hand. On that hard drive was my doctoral dissertation a film about my journey back to the Falklands where I fought in the war. For me, this type of encounter is not without its risks. My story is not framed in a black and white one dimensional piece of writing but is a film with dictaphone recordings, poetry, journal entries, music, and photographs. It is charged with emotion and it is raw. However, as I write this blog I realise that it has an honesty which is full of integrity and humility. The film finished and as Sarah wrote later:
We sat in silence at the end of the film. Words failed us in that moment. It might sound unusual, two relative strangers engaging in such an encounter in a university office, but watching that film in the presence of each other was the beginning of a productive working relationship exploring embodiment and experience, and a friendship developed through generosity of spirit and a shared intellectual agenda. (2015)
It was only 6 weeks later on the 13th October 2013 we presented a conversational presentation at the Forces Watch conference in London. I think what is important to say is that a ‘conversation’ is not the usual format for an academic conference. It was from this presentation and the subsequent responses from the audience that we realised how important it is to find ways of representing the veterans communities voice in a way that is creatively engaging. We wrote a paper called ‘You do not live in my skin (2015) with the aim of replicating the conversation and framing it within a wider academic context.
Fast forward to 2017 and a proposal was put into the Volkswagen Foundation and we were lucky enough to secure funding. I say lucky because it is incredibly difficult to secure any form of academic funding for research. There is a rigorous process and involves many pre application meetings. We have been involved in several applications that have not got over the finish line. However, we started the project and the basis of our research was simply to ask veterans and their families to ‘Tell us about their life in Civvie Street’
If you asked me what have been the most important aspects of this project, I would say it was the building of strong, supportive and trusting relationships. This is the very foundation that supported our motivation to work towards making a difference, whether that is within research or the veterans community. We know we are not going to change the world, far from it, but to find ways to give voice to the veteran’s community is fundamental to influencing change whether from an individual perspective, within local communities or nationally. Secondly it has been important that veteran researchers have been involved. Richard, Caroline and myself are invested in veteran research because of and through our own experiences both from serving and being members of the veteran community. This brings particularly important experiential knowledge and unique insight. It plays a part in bridging the gap between the research world and the veteran world. However, none of this happens without a project lead who shares a common intellectual agenda, who values us both as veteran researchers and work colleagues and a friendship beyond those work place colleague relationships we all experience in life.