As part of research into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) engagement with United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 and the Women Peace and Security agenda, I conducted a series of interviews with military personnel working within the alliance. This paper provides a reflection on ways perceptions of gender, sexuality and nationality provide and constrain opportunities to form inclusive spaces when interviewing within institutions of hegemonic masculinity, such as the military (Kronsell, 2006; 2012). Military organisations are inherently exclusionary spaces; accessing and interviewing ‘elites’ within these organisations requires navigating complex power relationships between researcher and participant, where it is assumed (sometimes incorrectly) that the elite will have control of the space. What became apparent during the research process was that perceptions of my identity - as a white, British, perceived-to-be heterosexual, ‘bloke’ - influenced the ways in which the military women and men I interviewed interacted with me. Further, they used their perceptions of my identity to articulate understandings of gender and security within their work. They would ‘bring my identity in’ to the conversations to construct, compare and contrast their experiences of institutional gender norms and of ‘other’ men and women, within the NATO structure. I argue within this paper that being ‘included’ in such a way generates particular insights; that (mis)perceptions of identity can facilitate a co-construction of knowledge, whilst also acting as a mechanism that allows the participants to control and condition the information they provide. However, (mis)perceptions also create (and reinforce) spaces of exclusion, where 'men like me' were not welcome. I argue that an ongoing process of ‘practical reflection’ (Ackerly & True, 2006) - that foregrounds and utilises perceptions of gender, sexuality and nationality of both researcher and participant - throughout the research process offers opportunities for feminist research within military organisations.
