A critical geopolitics of RAF recruitment

My doctoral research explores how the Royal Air Force (RAF) is popularly imagined through a focus on its military recruiting practices. RAF recruitment works by contextualising military actions within particular geographies and politics. Similarly, recruitment promotes the RAF through common-sense ideas about the value and role of armed conflict, about enemies and allies, what useful military identities are and the role technology plays in warfare. Beyond its presence in print (posters, magazines), on television or radio, RAF recruitment is present in everyday spaces. From the high street to the computer screen, the flight simulator to the airshow, these common-sense ideas are acted upon and performed by the potential recruit. Not only then is recruitment a way of learning about what the military does and why, it provides the potential recruit chance to engage materially and emotionally with the military. RAF recruitment is a practice through which specific ideas about military geographies and politics are acted upon and made tangible by the potential recruit.

My doctoral research engages with these issues in three ways.
1. Archival research: Through work at the archives of the RAF museum, Hendon, I have explored the ways in which the RAF has been promoted historically, and have uncovered major RAF recruiting themes.
2. Interviews and dialogues: By talking to RAF and corporate producers of RAF recruitment I have identified how the geographies and politics of RAF recruitment are imagined through creative practices.
3. Ethnographies: To engage with recruitment as a practice, I have performed in-depth participatory studies at military airshows and other public events.

The Postdoctoral Fellowship will enable me to share my research on RAF recruitment with wider academic, stakeholder and public audiences. Specifically, it will enable me to extend the theoretical and empirical remit of my research. My mentor for career development will be Professor Steve Graham, and I will receive training on research management, communication and public engagement from Newcastle University's Research Staff Support Training scheme. Importantly, the Fellowship will allow me to build upon and consolidate shared research interests in the military and politics in the School of Achtitecture, Planning and Landscape (APL), and more widely in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) at Newcastle.

In summary there are 3 aims for this Fellowship:
1. Publishing and disseminating research findings. With the aim of engaging in debates across a number of academic disciplines and extending my range of publications, I will write and submit three articles to leading peer-reviewed journals: on the Concept of Production for Geopolitics; Vision in Military Spaces for Antipode, and; the Politics of Experience for Political Geography.

2. Engaging with academic, stakeholder and public networks. I will engage with scholars form a range of different disciplines through presentations at 3 leading interdisciplinary conferences: the Royal Geographical Society with Institute of British Geographers, International Visual Sociology Association and Association of American Geographers. I will write and submit an article to the Imperial War Museum Review, and curate an exhibition of research materials, both of which will foster the transference of knowledge.

3. Broadening the research remit. Through the activities above, I will broaden the research remit by engaging with audiences beyond the university, through receiving professional mentoring from Professor Graham and playing an active role in military/political research agendas in and beyond HASS at Newcastle. I will also organise a one-day Symposium at Newcastle on emergent work in critical military studies, and develop a British Academy Fellowship application on everyday militarism and militarisation.