Academic Publications
Academic | Performer | Musician | Public Speaker | War Veteran
Film, Narrative Agency, and the Politics of Care in Veteran Britain.
Film offers untapped potential for influencing world politics by empowering communities through storytelling. This paper combines International Relations, narrative theory, and feminist care scholarship to explore film as a tool for narrative agency—challenging dominant narratives. Focusing on military-to-civilian transition in Britain, it critiques the emphasis on employment and economic productivity, creating a ‘care deficit’ for veterans. The Stories in Transition project, using co-created film, illustrates how making care visible can intervene in this process. Drawing on feminist care ethics, the paper highlights film’s power to offer alternative narratives that support life and hope after military service.
Bald Men Sharing a Comb: War veteran subjectivity in the documentary play Minefield.
The author, a former Royal Marine and Falklands War veteran, reflects on how war profoundly shaped his identity as a veteran, researcher, performer, and disabled person. He explores his involvement in Minefield/Campo Minado, a documentary theatre piece uniting veterans from both sides of the Falklands conflict. He critiques how military research objectifies veterans, reducing them to problems to be solved. Instead, he advocates for creative storytelling to evoke empathy and represent veterans’ complex experiences. Through theatre, music, and multimodal narratives, he challenges rigid identity categories and calls for a more humanized, artistic approach to understanding war and its aftermath.
Le Guerra en el Cuerpo. Turba: Memorias De Malvinas.
This graphic novel examines the enduring impact of the Falklands/Malvinas War, capturing the voices of veterans and families in Argentina and the UK. Using a travel chronicle format, author Laura weaves together immersive and dynamic narratives collected over two years. The interviews are mixed with text and image documents, media discourses, and the daily interaction between the protagonists. Within the book I reflect on my post war experiences as a veteran within the UK. The novel highlights both personal and collective consequences of the war, emphasizing the complexities of memory, truth, and the ongoing struggle for recognition and understanding.
You do not live in my skin: Embodiment, Voice, and the Veteran
This paper challenges traditional academic approaches to veterans’ embodied experiences, advocating for a more dialogue-oriented form of engagement. Drawing from recent conferences, it blends monologic academic argument with open exploration to question assumptions about veteran identity. Concerned with how researchers, policymakers, and media claim to “know” veteran experiences, the paper rethinks embodiment, voice, and listening as central to knowledge production. It seeks to move beyond embodiment as a heuristic device, proposing “the conversation” as an alternative research praxis—one that redefines how knowledge about veterans is generated and understood within academic discourse
A Short Autoethnographic Narrative: Living and working with trauma.
This autoethnographic reflection explores the author’s transition from Royal Marine to civilian life, highlighting the impact of war trauma, PTSD, and the struggle for acceptance in a new world. It examines how war experience shape’s identity, the challenges of reintegration, and the societal stereotypes veterans face. Through academic research, counselling, and personal narratives, the author finds meaning in sharing lived experiences. The piece emphasizes the importance of witnessing, listening, and representing trauma authentically, advocating for research that “shows” rather than “tells.” Ultimately, it underscores the ongoing journey of understanding, acceptance, and healing from the scars of war.