Research Community

Danielle Dryden is a Research Assistant at the Combat Stress Centre for Applied Military Health Research. Her current work focuses on women veterans, military sexual trauma, and the translation of evidence-based research into practice and policy. She is also involved in exploring the use of wearable technology as a tool for monitoring physical activity and mental health in veterans. Her broader research interests include trauma and the experiences of military children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), specifically autism.

Alexandria Smith is a Post-doctoral Researcher at King's Centre for Military Health Research. She earned a combined PhD in Chronic Disease Epidemiology and Nursing and an MSN in Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing from Yale University and an MSPH in Health Policy Research from Emory University. Her research focuses broadly on understanding mental health conditions, their prevalence, treatment approaches, and prevention strategies across diverse populations including veterans.  She is particularly interested in identifying ways to reduce self-harm and to improve behavioural health services.

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 Amber McKenzie is situated in KCMHR, King’s College London. She is currently a postdoctoral research associate funded by the Wellcome Trust exploring the experiences of minorities in the UK Armed Forces and other male-dominated workplaces.

Amber’s PhD work explored adjustment disorder in the UK Armed Forces population. Using a mixed-methods approach, Amber provided a profile of what an adjustment disorder looks like for Armed Forces personnel and Veterans, identifying potential factors associated, and outlining clinical and occupational outcomes.

Amber also teaches on the Psychology BSc programme and contributes to the development of undergraduate modules. Her research interests are mostly in occupational mental health, mental health interventions, mental health implications for ethnic minorities and ethnic minorities experiences in the military.

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.

Dr Chinedu Udeh-Momoh is a Translational Neuroscientist whose work focuses on developing contextual dementia prevention strategies for individuals such as female Veterans, who are at the highest risk for developing dementia, also across diverse populations. Her research adopts a translational approach to elucidate dementia prevention bio-mechanistic pathways and strategies, by integrating human clinical studies with experimental animal models. Furthermore, she leads global initiatives to address gender and racial disparities in medical research and academia. Overall, her work is at the forefront of translational neuroscience and dementia epidemiology, bringing together fundamental neuroscience discoveries to improve human health and wellbeing.