Researcher spotlight: Natalie Merryman

Exploring women veterans’ experiences of the Australian Defence Force as a gendered institution.

Natalie Merryman is a PhD Candidate at University of Newcastle, Australia, conducting qualitative sociological research into the experiences of Australian women veterans. She is a former Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) member who has recent extensive experience working as a health professional. Over the past 20 years she has been advocating for veterans and defence personnel from a variety of roles and maintains a strong connection to the veteran support space. 

Her PhD research project aims to explore how Australian military women embody and perform gender within an institution whose core function is war fighting, and which is subsequently structured to represent and value a martial masculinity as its baseline identity. Natalie has conducted in depth interviews with more than a dozen women veterans and is using the feminist qualitative method of narrative inquiry to explore how those women experience and navigate gender within the hypermasculine environment of the military. 

Natalie is also affiliated with Flinders University through Open Door, an Australasian multi-disciplinary research hub that conducts research in partnership with veterans, service personnel and the wider sector including those with lived experience. Through this and other networks she is hopeful that this research will have meaningful impact on knowledge about women veterans’ experiences and inform future policies and interventions to result in more positive outcomes for veterans and their families. This includes collaboration with other individuals and organisations working towards bringing an end to veteran suicide.

Natalie will be presenting initial findings from her research at the Napier Ediburgh University Armed Forces in Society Conference in August this year.