Heather A. Warfield is a professor, author, and consultant with subject matter expertise on battlefield pilgrimages. During 2022-2023, she was a Fulbright Research Scholar in France where she examined post-World War I pilgrimages to Belleau and Belleau Wood. This research synthesized archival data with interviews of pilgrims, local inhabitants, and pilgrimage stakeholders and will be published in a forthcoming book (2025). Warfield has contributed pilgrimage expertise for US military staff rides and other educational experiences for groups such as the US Marine Corps, US Army, US Military Academy, and the US National Guard Bureau.
Warfield’s scholarly interest in the psychology of pilgrimages was an outgrowth of her career as a mental health therapist and work with military veterans. Her PhD dissertation focused on the therapeutic value of pilgrimages and she concluded that pilgrimages are holistic biological-psychological-social-spiritual endeavors. Moreover, she suggested that pilgrimages may be particularly beneficial for military members and veterans. Over the past decade, Warfield’s research has focused on what motivates people to go on pilgrimages, the narratives pilgrims share about their experiences, and the meaning pilgrims create from these journeys.
While writing a chapter on the newly marked Western Front Way (New Pilgrimage Routes and Trails), Warfield discovered that WWI veterans from all over the world made pilgrimages to the Western Front during the interwar era. On former battlefields, these veterans found settings wherein they could grapple with individual and collective loss, consider existential questions, engage in the grieving process in socially-sanctioned places of mourning, and make meaning of the war.
Warfield became fascinated by these post-WWI pilgrimages because she was seeing similar themes in her research interviews with current veterans going on battlefield pilgrimages. The primary difference is that the WWI-era veterans were visiting places where they had first-hand experiences. Current service members and veterans were visiting the same WWI battlefields but overlaying experiences from other battlefields and other wars (e.g., Iraq or Afghanistan) on to the landscape. The battlefield remained as a constant variable while the people changed over time. However, despite the changes in people, time, and distance, many service members and veterans report experiences in 2024 that are similar to their forebears in the 1920s. This continuity adds to the meaning – revisiting the battlefield evolves into retracing the footsteps of those who revisited the battlefield.
In addition to battlefield pilgrimages, Warfield has published generally on the psychological dimensions of pilgrimages and has given university lectures, community talks, media interviews, and keynote speeches on this topic. She is collaborating with international colleagues on projects such as Saint Francis Ways and Ruines, a multiyear initiative focused on the social and political uses of war ruins in France.
