Research Community

Anna is a Research Associate at KCMHR where she currently leads the qualitative component of ADVANCE-INVEST, a long-term project investigating the experiences and outcomes of battlefield casualties who have left the military. She has previously worked on KCMHR 'Support to Families of Wounded, Injured, or Sick (WIS) Service Personnel – An Investigation of Current Service Provision' Study and 'Potential Gaps and Service Parents’ and Adolescents’ Challenges and Experiences' Study. Anna is particularly interested in post-deployment transition, Veterans and their families, peer support and co-production, Serving/ex-Serving fathers with PTSD and their families, and WIS Service personnel.

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.

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.

Dr Andrew Phillips is an expert in structural biomechanics, specializing in combining musculoskeletal and finite element modelling. His research optimizes strategies for structural engineering and skeletal biomechanics, while also exploring bioinspired structures based on environmental factors. With a background in Civil Engineering and a PhD in Orthopaedic Engineering, Dr Phillips has held key positions at the Edinburgh Orthopaedic Engineering Centre and Imperial College London and coordinates the MEng Civil Engineering program. Additionally, he organizes the Parametric Engineering Course and is involved in the Centre for Blast Injury Studies.

Dr Beverly Bergman trained in medicine at the University of Birmingham. She worked as an Army doctor, initially in general practice before transferring into public health in 1996. She was appointed Senior Lecturer in Preventive Medicine at the Royal Army Medical College in 1997, and was Honorary Senior Lecturer in Public Health and Epidemiology at the University of Birmingham 2002-2009. Appointed Army Parkes Professor of Preventive Medicine in 2007, she was a member of the Army Medical Services Research Ethics Committee, the Surgeon General’s Research Strategy Group and the Army Scientific Advisory Committee. She worked in the Army’s health policy unit at the Ministry of Defence before moving to Scotland where she was seconded to the Scottish Government as Military Medical Liaison Officer. Since retiring from the Army in 2012, she has been at the Institute of Health & Wellbeing of the University of Glasgow where, after completing a PhD study on the long-term health of military veterans in Scotland in 2016, she was an Honorary Senior Research Fellow before being appointed Honorary Clinical Associate Professor in 2021. She was appointed OBE for Services to Veterans in Scotland in the New Year Honours list 2021.