Dr David Jackson

Postdoctoral Research Associate

Dr David Jackson is a former Royal Marine and during this time he served in Northern Ireland and the Falklands war. After a medical discharge from the Royal Marines 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 studied psychology with the Open University and graduated in 1995 with a BSc (Hons). In 2002 he completed his MA in counselling studies at the UEA writing an autoethnographical exploration of his PTSD titled ‘Has my journey from Royal Marine to counsellor enabled me to ultimately accept my experience of war?’ In 2010 he graduated from the University of Bristol completing his EdD. His dissertation was called Seven days Down South: a war story and uses film, photos, poetic representation, song and artefacts from the past as a representation of his story and the narratives of war veterans. He is an expert in the social and cultural aspects of war veterans living in society and the use of multi modal representations of narrative. He is an honorary Research Fellow at the University of Exeter and currently working on The Military Afterlives Project and the Stories in Transition Project. For the last six years David has also been a performer in the highly successful documentary theatre play Minefield/Campo Minado. The play brings together three Argentine veterans and three British veterans of the Falklands war 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

As a disabled veteran David’s research interests are about how we can find evocative ways in which we can encourage engagement and involvement of the veteran and family’s community within the research process. It is about moving away from mono modal outputs and moving towards creative research methods that offer engaging research to create new knowledge. He is interested in how participatory and co research methods can help the community to find an alternative voice within the veteran’s research landscape. In turn leading to a different understanding of veterans and families lives and therefore bettering their lives through tangible differences to the structures that support veterans and their families.

David is a member of the Defence Research Network, the CMS international Research Group and Open Door: Veterans Transition, Integration and Well-being

External impact and engagement

Publications

Jackson, D. (2008). A short autoethnographic narrative: living and working with trauma. Counselling at Work. 61. pp. 11 – 14.

Jackson, D. Spruce, K. and Peacocke, R. (2015) The Mental Health Researchers Toolkit for Involving Veteran Mental Health Service Users. National Institute for Health Research, London

Bulmer, S. and Jackson, D. (2016). "You do not live in my skin" Embodiment, voice and the veteran. Critical Military Studies DOI: 10.1080/23337486.2015.1118799

Fernandez, L. (2022). Le Guerra en el Cuerpo. Turba: Memorias De Malvinas. Chapter 6. p. 83 – 94.

Jackson. D. (2022). Bald Men Sharing a Comb: War veteran subjectivity in the documentary play Minefield. Creative Methods in Military Studies.

Impact and Engagement

Performer in Malvinas 40 Anos Despues (Falklands 40 Years) (2022)

Presentation at University of Quilmers, Buenos Aries, Argentina. We really are no different you know: Post war narratives of Falkland veterans and families. (2019)

Key Note Speaker. Deployment Returnees Discourses and Living Worlds of an Emerging Social Group. “You do not live in my skin”: the argument for alternative representations of the culture of war. Phillips University of Malburg, Germany. July 2017.

Academic consultant for the Lord Ashcroft's Veterans Transition Review. (2017)

Performer in the film Theatre of War (2017)

Performer in the documentary play Minefield (2016 – current)

Performer in El Camino del Encuentro (The Path of Encounter). (2016)

https://play.cine.ar/INCAA/produccion/5290

Key Note Speaker. War Veteran, Reservists and Families:
Living in an alien world. ‘Encountering the Sense-Worlds of War Veterans’ September, 2014

Militarisation In Everyday Life: Rethinking the Veteran. Dr David Jackson and Dr Sarah Bulmer. 19th October 2013.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFczPv7-B88

Key Note Speaker. Veteran to Veteran Conference. Do you know who we really are? September 2013

Facilitator. Veteran and Families Research Steering Group. Heart of England Mental Health Research Hub. September 2013 – September 2015.

Former Co Director of Veteran to Veteran (Turning it around) a community interest group whose aim was to better the lives of war veterans and their dependants throughout the UK through furthering the understanding of the cultural and social difficulties for War Veterans and families within society through workshops and seminars and through research and publication. (2012-2017)

Biography