Researcher Spotlight: Victoria Sutch

Women’s Life after the Military: Women Veterans’ Transition from Military to Civilian life and Implications for Gender Identity

Victoria Sutch is a PhD candidate at Cardiff University, conducting research into the gendered implications of military service in Women Veterans in the UK.

Her research aims to explore how ex-service women in Britain go about their daily lives with the impact of having gone through the gendered experience of military life. The main framework for her research lays in Gender and Queer Theory, exploring how gender performativity changes in relation to military service. She believes that these theories can help us to understand the experiences of women veterans upon leaving the military.

She has a background in English Literature at undergraduate and master’s level, working with military memoirs and novels. This has led her to working with women and their real lived experiences, with her primary drive being to help the stories of women veterans be heard and take centre stage in the research.

In addition to her main research, she is also keenly interested in the use of creative methods in data collection.

Victoria has also been working as an intern with the FVTP for a three-month period, helping to keep the project running behind the scenes.