Research Community

The Centre for Blast Injury Studies at Imperial College was established in 2008 following Operation Herrick and aims to capture the hard-learned lessons that produced record levels of survivorship and learn lessons for future conflicts on how to further increase survivability. Their work aims to understand the long-term outcomes of survivors with previously un-survivable injuries and develop medical interventions for injured survivors as they age. The centre is interdisciplinary, bringing engineers, medics, and scientists together to address difficult issues, and translational- driving societal benefits and changes in acute medical care, equipment improvements such as PPE and vehicle design, testing of equipment through new surrogates for use in blast/trauma setting, and changes to relevant UK and NATO Standards

The Centre for Military Women’s Research (CMWR)’s core mission is to inform and improve the well-being of women in the military and Veteran community through world-leading collaborative research and evaluation. Their work highlights women’s experiences, issues, and support needs and the centre is dedicated to fostering co-production with members of the military community and collaboration with partners and stakeholders.

Charlotte Williamson is a doctoral student at King’s Centre for Military Health Research, King’s College London. Her PhD seeks to explore self-harm and suicide behaviours in the UK Armed Forces using a mixed-methods design. Prior to commencing her PhD, she worked as a Research Assistant across several research projects in the field of military mental health, at both Combat Stress and the King's Centre for Military Health Research. Her research interests include self-harm and suicidality, military mental health, and using digital technology in mental health care.

CEDAR is an Applied Psychological Practice Centre of Excellence, and one of the UK's largest providers of training in evidence-based psychological practice and therapies, working in the NHS and private practice. One of the research groups (APTIA) focuses on adapting low-intensity written and mobile phone app-based CBT interventions to improve access and effectiveness for diverse groups, such as Armed Forces Veterans, Muslims, Informal Caraers and people with various physical health conditions. 

Combat Stress has an established record of conducting high-quality robust research to ensure the delivery of the best possible services to the Veteran community. Their work is focused on furthering understanding of how best to help Veterans with mental health difficulties and currently has three main areas of focus: Evaluating Combat Stress treatment programmes, population research (Understanding the needs of help-seeking Veterans) and exploring new ways to support help-seeking Veterans.

Dr Alison Osborne is a Senior Researcher in Psychology, with research interests in identity, well-being, EDI, digital health, Armed Forces, and mixed methodologies. Her current work is focussing on the role of digital technologies in women’s health communications. Alison’s research portfolio includes several projects with the Armed Forces Community centred on well-being, alcohol use, bereavement, family separation and limb loss. Most recently, Alison was the lead researcher for Fighting With Pride on the first UK research project exploring the experiences and impact of the UK Armed Forces ‘gay ban’ with LGBT+ Veterans.