Research Community

Linda Slapakova is a Senior Analyst at RAND where she leads work on the Defence workforce and Armed Forces Community. Her work cuts across personnel policy (particularly understanding future personnel policy challenges, incentivisation, career and talent management) and understanding the experiences and support needs of Veterans and military families. In the latter category, her recent projects have focused on understanding the financial stability of military families, the lived experience of military-to-civilian transition among Veteran cohorts with protected or minority characteristics, and implementation of the Armed Forces Covenant. She is a primarily qualitative researcher and her research interests mainly sit within the field of military sociology and applied policy research.

Lucy is a part-time PhD student with Edinburgh Napier University whilst also serving as an officer in the Royal Air Force. She has a background in Human Resource Management having previously studied cross-cultural competence in British Service Personnel serving in multinational NATO units. Her current research focuses on the role of identity loss in career transition for veterans working with the prison services with the ultimate hope of improving the career transition process for all veterans.

Professor Cotterill is the lead for the Centre for Human Performance Research, His specific area of expertise is the psychology of human performance, and he is both an active practitioner psychologist and researcher in this field. He is experienced as a practitioner psychologist working with a range of military populations focused on psychological performance, mental health and wellbeing. In addition, Prof Cotterill's research seek to better understand factors that impact upon service personnel role performance. Including sleep, resilience, mental health and wellbeing, addiction, stress and coping and performance under pressure. He is also interested in transitions within the military and out of the military into civilian life.

As a social scientist within Robert Gordon University, Professor Zoe Morrison worked to further the application of business and management studies to policy driven change programmes. Her work aimed to inform leadership and human resource management theory through understanding individual experiences of change, including changing expectations of work, careers and employment, and adoption and implementation of technological innovation. Her interpretivist research agenda was curiosity inspired and theoretically driven, drawing on the sociology of work and organisations, and military and family sociologies. Zoe worked in three areas: health, defence and carbon emissions mitigation, often referred to as decarbonisation. Zoe has now moved role to be the Lead Specialist in Culture and Experience at NHS Grampian. 

RAND Europe is a not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to improve policy and decision-making through objective research. It combines the impartiality and academic rigour of a university with the client-oriented delivery approach of a consultancy. RAND Europe’s Defence and Security research group conducts research on a range of subjects, including those relating to Defence workforces and the wider Armed Forces Community. Examples of recent work undertaken by the Defence and Security group in this area include research examining the impact of the Armed Forces Covenant and multiple studies examining areas of potential disadvantage (e.g., employment, financial stability and social care) faced by members of the Armed Forces Community.

Rebecca Steel is the Director of the College for Military Veterans and Emergency Services based at the University of Central Lancashire, she has led the programme of transition and engagement for the armed forces community for the past three years. Rebecca is a strong advocate for education as a pathway to transition.

In addition, Rebecca is from a military family with three service children of her own. Rebecca’s research portfolio involves a number of studies and focusses on the impact of military mobility/transition on education and the future trajectories of families engaged with military service. Rebecca’s research employs participatory and mixed methodologies to explore themes around education, learning, and employment to ensure a level playing field and sense of agency for those hidden voices of the military community who are seldom heard.

Rebecca is currently leading research on identifying the needs of service young people, veterans, and spouses in Further and Higher Education.

Rebecca is a member of the Service Children’s Progression (SCiP) Alliance Management Group, chairs the North West’s SCiP Hub, a founder member of Lancashire Armed Forces Covenant Hub and is involved in several active research programmes locally, nationally and internationally