Bringing the Homefront to the Forefront: UK perspectives on critical research with military spouses

On the 9th of July 2021, the Rethinking Military Spouses: Critical Research Group hosted a webinar titled ‘Bringing the Homefront to the Forefront: UK Perspectives on Critical Research with Military Spouses’. This report provides some information about the event and includes an overview of the main points of discussion focused on four key themes – access, methodologies, impact, and criticality. When conducting critical research with military spouses, researchers must consider a wide range of issues particular to this specific group. These include: • Challenges around gaining access and the implications that recruitment strategies might have on the voices that are heard. • Choosing a methodological approach and associated methods which enable rich perspectives and experiences to be heard – balancing the needs of research objectives whilst also considering possible benefits to the participants. • Balancing research objectives and activities with expectations of academic institutions, funders, and identified beneficiaries –considering what impact might be and how it can be achieved and accounted for. • Navigating how the dynamics of criticality must be balanced against the need to attract funding, articulate impact, and gain ethics approval from the MOD – with there sometimes being tensions between these factors. Research which centres military spouses is needed in order to understand the impact of military life, power, and processes beyond more obviously militarised phenomena.