Research Community

Dr Dan Leightley is a Lecturer in Digital Health Sciences at the School of Life Course & Population Sciences at King’s College London. Dan’s research is focused on the interface between physical and mental health using digital technology, secondary data and AI. Dan also has an interest in military mental health, cyber security and data governance. He holds grants from the Forces in Mind Trust, National Institute of Health Research, UK Medical Research Council and UK Cabinet Office.

Dr David Jackson is a disabled Royal Marine Veteran and an honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter. He is currently working on The Military Afterlives Project and the Stories in Transition Project. His research interests include engagement and involvement of the ex-Service personnel community and their families within the research process, particularly through participatory and co-research methods. He is interested in moving away from mono modal outputs and moving towards creative research methods which can lead to a different understanding of Veterans and their families.

Dean Whybrow’s research area is organizational health and well-being. He is a subject matter expert in well-being and occupational mental health care. This includes developing resources to cope with job demands such as high workload, ethical dilemmas, or exposure to potentially traumatic events. He is focused on the interplay between job demands and job resources, and strategies for promoting employee resilience. On the flip side are employee burnout, disengagement, and workforce attrition. These factors are especially relevant to healthcare workforces where staff recruitment, education, and retention can impact service delivery. His emphasis is promoting recovery and well-being, understanding the decision to leave a job, the experience of career change and identifying opportunities to promote employee engagement and retention. 

Dr Ed Bryan is an Analyst and the Supporting Lead of the Defence Workforce and Armed Forces Community research portfolio at RAND Europe. His research interests include defence workforce trends, Armed Forces cultures and discourse, as well as areas of systematic disadvantage and vulnerability amongst military populations. Ed holds a PhD, MPhil, and BA in Geopolitics and Political Geography from the University of Cambridge and previously served as an anti-corruption intelligence researcher for UK police forces in the Eastern Region.

Dr Ellen McHugh is Senior Lecturer in Education in the Department of Education, Brunel University London. Ellen’s research interests focus on education and student experience; higher education and widening participation; transnationalism and belonging.

Dr Elliott Atkinson is a neuromuscular physiologist whose interests primarily lie in the underpinning neural mechanisms of human motor function. His focus is to investigate how the human neural system adapts to resistance training and pathophysiological conditions, and the influence of sex and hormonal status. He aims to combine these focuses to understand better the neural mechanisms and impact of hormonal status in both healthy and clinical groups, and how resistance training might be better tailored to provide improved quality of life outcomes.