Military Welfare History Network

To best understand how contemporary military welfare systems are working or failing, and where they are going in the future, we must first understand where they came from and how they got to where they are today. To do this we require historical underpinning.

The Military Welfare History Network provides this kind of fact-based, critical historical analysis of military welfare, benefits and provisions for those in uniform and their families. It also uses this methodology to evaluate and influence contemporary military and civilian systems of welfare and care and social policies.

Whether welfare, benefits, care, or medical provisions, all military welfare systems require an historical underpinning. This facilitates understanding, evaluation, innovation, and purposeful, functional and worthwhile development, implementation and management by militaries, states and societies.

These activities are undertaken by its 200 members, who are based in over 125 Higher Education Institutions in 23 different countries around the world, and in association with a score of affiliated journals, museums, research centres, projects, and organisations. These include:

Together, Members and Affiliates are sharing their immense expertise; developing research consortia, publications and projects; and endeavouring to develop this immensely diverse and important interdisciplinary field of research, education and public policy.

Although history is at the heart of the network and membership largely comprises researchers in History departments, this is not just a venture for historians. MWHN membership is also drawn from French, Modern Languages and European Studies, Photography and Political Science departments and backgrounds, and from Museums and Archives, and independent scholars. The Network is also open to any perspective of the historical past, from Antiquity, through the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, to the Modern and Contemporary periods.

The Military Welfare History Network is always open to new Members and Affiliates – membership is free. Contact us today

Collaborators can be:

• Academic Staff, Researchers, Postgraduates
• Service Providers
• Military Departments
• Military Museums
• Military Archives
• Military Charities
• Government Bodies or Departments

If you or your organisation researches or provides welfare, care or medical provisions relating to armed forces personnel or their families in or across any geographical or cultural space, chronology, or thematic area, from a historical perspective, then the Military Welfare History Network would like to work with you.