Research Team

Below are our dedicated team who work on Military Afterlives.

Dr Sarah Bulmer

Dr Sarah Bulmer is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Exeter. Sarah’s research explores the relations between militaries and the societies they serve, and the identities and experiences of armed forces personnel, veterans, and their families.

She is particularly interested in developing research methods which enable the experiences of members of the military and veteran community to be heard including life story, dialogic performance, collaborative filmmaking, and community engagement. Her wider aim is to increase societal understanding of the costs and legacies of war and war-preparedness and to inform civic debate on these issues.

Research Interests: Military-civilian transition, military identities, gender and sexuality, creative methods for research, critical military studies. For more information see here.

Dr Caroline Micklewright

Dr Caroline Micklewright is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and a Lecturer at Cranfield University within the Centre for Defence Leadership and Management. Prior to entering academia, she was a logistics officer in the Royal Air Force specialising in Air Transport and Information Systems. Her PhD explored power, identity, and gender within the masculine military institution and its effects during transition out of the Armed Forces. Her current focus centres on publishing her PhD research, improving the outcomes of veterans, and championing the mainstreaming of gendered thought in organisational policy and decision making.

Research Interests: Military-civilian transition, critical military studies, gendered identities, women in organisations. For more information see here.

Dr David Jackson

Dr David Jackson is a former Royal Marine and a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Exeter. He served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands war and after a medical discharge in 1995 he trained as a counsellor and life coach. He now specialises in working with veterans and their families. In 1996 he was diagnosed with PTSD from his experiences of war.

David is an expert in the social and cultural aspects of war veterans living in society and the use of multi modal representations of narrative. Since 2016 David has also been a performer in the highly successful documentary theatre play Minefield/Campo Minado. The play brings together three Falklands/Malvinas veterans who tell their life stories before, during and after the war. The play has been performed 190 times in 32 cities around the world.

Research Interests: Veteran research, creative research methods, participatory and co-productive research methods. For more information see here.

Dr Richard Davis

Richard was a Royal Signals officer for 24 years, seeing operational service in an infantry role in Northern Ireland and as a squadron commander in Gulf War 1. He left the Army in 2001 to pursue a civilian career in consulting and programme management, until he was called up in 2005 to run information operations during the Iraq campaign.

Richard is an expert in organisational change and how this can be managed. He researched people’s experience of working relationships during organisational change for his part-time doctorate with Ashridge Business School which he completed in 2017. Richard is married to Jo, who was in the Army when they met, they have two adult children who grew up on military bases.

Edward Jones

Edward is a final year International Relations student at the University of Exeter, Penryn campus and he is interested in politics, history, and the military.

He joined the Military Afterlives project as a Research Assistant intern in the spring of 2022, having been interested in the experiences of veterans after listening to stories told by his relatives and friends.

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Gabe Kupper

Gabe is a recent History and International Relations graduate from the University of Exeter with a particular interest in conflict, identity and security.

Gabe joined the Military Afterlives project as a Producer for the film ‘What is a Veteran?’ in Easter 2023 and continues to contribute to the project’s outreach and communication efforts.