Belonging in the British Army: Investigating identity and the self through corporeality

Seeking to explore how Service personnel in the British Army feel and experience belonging and embodiment through their bodies in military Service, this project explores the diversity of experiences of military Service and the ways in which Service personnel navigate their individual and collective belonging to the military institution. This research will contribute to a large body of scholarship spanning critical military studies, feminist, and gender studies. Its aim is to offer new empirical findings on the material experiences of military embodiment, namely the relationships a service person's body has to military Service and the meanings and identities attached to it. This is a wider exploration of what is means and feels to belong.

The project aims to: 

• Understand the significance of, and relationship between, the body and belonging in military Service.
• Examine multiple meanings of belonging to the military institution for Service personnel, its importance to their Service, and to their sense of self.
• Identify the specific ways in which Service personnel who represent minority groups (i.e., LGBTQ+ and ethnic minorities) experience belonging.
• Understand how and why belonging may shift or change overtime for Service personnel.
• Examine the connections between policies relating to inclusion, the social and cultural production of belonging, and how both are played out in and through experiences of military embodiment. 

The project invites British Army personnel (regular, reservist, and Veterans) to take part in semi-structured interviews about their lived experiences of belonging across their Service. The researcher particularly welcomes participants who identify as women, LGBTQ+, and/or members of ethnic minority groups, to volunteer to take part.

Indicative interview topics are organised across four broad thematic categories of analysis, comradeship and socialising, customs and formalities, experiences of inclusion, and changes to the body throughout Service. However, interviews will be a space for participants to discuss what is most important to them and their understanding of belonging in their military service. The indicative interview topics aim to encourage participants to think about how they may feel and experience belonging through their bodies. 

Critical discourse analysis of Joint Service Publications (JSPs), biannual diversity statistics, and other policies and directives will also be conducted to examine the language used by the British Armed Forces regarding the management of its personnel.  The researcher will look to understand how lived experience may differ from policy to begin to establish possible recommendations for change and/or further research and to explore how belonging may be produced and managed through formal institutional discourses such as policies and practices.

This project seeks to address the following research questions:

• What is the significance of and relationship between the body and belonging in military Service?
• How do Service personnel define belonging, and what is its importance to their Service and their sense of self?
• How and why may belonging shift or change overtime for Service personnel? What can be done to address this?
• How are the bodies of Service personnel are attached to the institution they serve? What does this mean for policy and lived experience?

British Army personnel (regular, reservist, and Veteran) who identify as women, LGBTQ+, and/or are individuals from ethnic minority groups.