Research Community

Dr Pamela Almeida-Meza is a Research Associate at the King’s Centre for Military Health Research. She is an epidemiologist whose work investigates how social, occupational, and life-course factors shape mental and physical health across populations. Her research spans ageing, dementia, caregiving, and occupational health, with a focus on health inequalities.

Pamela’s current work focuses on the physical and mental health of UK Armed Forces veterans using primary care data from the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD), contributing to a growing evidence base on the healthcare needs of UK veterans.

Dr Paul Ansdell is a Physiologist whose research focuses on how age, sex, and hormonal status interact to determine physiological function in health and disease. His work to date aims to detail the interaction between systems and quantify acute responses and chronic adaptation to interventions, such as exercise. Specifically, he is interested in how hormones affect brain health and function across the male and female lifespan.

Dr Sarah Dixon Smith is a Research Associate at Imperial College London and the ADVANCE study. Her work explores the long-term outcomes of early medical and surgical trauma care interventions in British Veterans, particularly the impact of blood products, analgesics and casualty evacuation. Sarah received her PhD from the Centre for Blast Injury Studies for her work in blast injury and chronic pain, using a longitudinal dataset to track lifelong medical information for 100 amputee Veterans. She is particularly interested in chronic pain, premature ageing after trauma, and the use of Applied History in Veterans’ healthcare.

Dr Sharon Stevelink is a Reader in Epidemiology at the King's Centre for Military Health Research (KCMHR), King's College London. She (co-) leads on a range of studies exploring the health and well-being of the Armed Forces community. She has a keen interest in using novel data sources and techniques to advance research into the health and well-being of military personnel and Veterans. 

Dr Stefan Schilling is a Lecturer in Social & Organizational Psychology at Exeter University. His research interests are the social determinants of health, well-being and teamwork and in particular how to develop healthy and supportive teams in healthcare and the military. He has considerable experience working with the military, having taught military officers for 8 years at King's College London Defence Studies Department, where he also completed his Ph.D. on cohesion, teamwork and leadership in a large exploratory study with the Royal Marines. He has also accompanied various military units on military exercises overseas, and has been involved with military ethics training and devised leadership training for entrepreneurs.

Dr Tamlyn Watermeyer is a neuropsychology Researcher, interested in brain and behaviour relationships, who seeks to understand biological and psycho-social determinants of brain health in later life, such as why some people develop cognitive decline and why others do not, and what we can do to prevent this. Her work in female Veteran health aims to understand possible biological, social and psychological factors that might contribute to their poorer brain health outcomes.