The project team consists of six members of academic staff from four universities across the UK: ARU, University of Exeter, Manchester Metropolitan University and University of the Arts, London.
The team combines a wide range of expertise including politics and sociology, critical military studies and ‘veteran studies’ research, filmmaking and creative practice, and co-productive research methodologies.
Principal Investigator: Dr Nick Caddick
Dr Nick Caddick is currently Associate Professor of Political Sociology at the Veterans and Families Institute for Military Social Research (VFI) at ARU. His research uses narrative as a conceptual and methodological device for exploring the legacies of war and conflict for veterans and other groups impacted by war. This means he is interested in the stories veterans tell about their military and post-military lives, and in what these stories do to shape our public understanding of the wars they fought in and the conditions they served under.
Nick's role as Principal Investigator on the Stories in Transition project involves coordinating numerous elements of the research design and activities being carried out with the partner organisations. He is responsible for the overall delivery of the project, managing the budget, and supporting and guiding the research team in carrying out their tasks on the project. He also brings to the project a background in qualitative research and narrative inquiry, helping to interpret and analyse the data collected using narrative analysis methods.
Co-Investigator: Dr Sarah Bulmer
Dr Sarah Bulmer is a Senior Lecturer in the Politics department at the University of Exeter. Her research explores military identities, the legacies of contemporary conflict, and the relations between militaries and the societies they serve. She is particularly interested in the ways that gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability, shape the experiences of military personnel and veterans.
Sarah's role on Stories in Transition is to lead the case study development for each of the three partner organisations. This involves gathering and analysing numerous sources of data in order to produce case summaries and other output linked to our core research questions. She also works closely with David Jackson in supporting the veteran-led interviews and observations with the three partners.
Co-Investigator: Prof Shreepali Patel
Prof Shreepali Patel is Professor of Film and Screen at the University of Arts London, London College of Communication, a filmmaker, story consultant, writer and former BBC producer/director. Her practice-based research, underpinned by 30 years of film and broadcast industry experience, focuses on new strategies and creative intervention to surface diverse voices and support the preservation of identity, culture and heritage through powerful narrative experiences.
Shreepali founded the multi-award winning research institute StoryLab at ARU, where she holds a Visiting Professorship and the BAFTA and Emmy winning production company, Eyeline Films. She holds several advisory, associate, trustee and executive positions, including British Association of Film and Television Screen Studies, Royal Television Society, and Cambridge Digital Humanities.
Shreepali's role as Co-Investigator on the project is the lead story consultant on the project, and to guide the creative and narrative development of the three films being produced with its partner organisations. She provides creative advice, direction and support in each aspect of film production, and the use and application of creative storytelling technologies as part of the co-creation process, during pre-production, production, post-production and delivery. She is also involved in coordinating the logistical side of film production, including timeframe, crews, budgeting and resources.
Co-Investigator: Dr James Duggan
Dr James Duggan is currently a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Health and Education, at Manchester Metropolitan University. His research focuses on developing new and innovative approaches to co-produce research with young people and communities. This focus enables him to work across a diverse range of areas, currently including youth loneliness, youth and community work, digital methods in 'smart' schools, and veteran transitions.
Across all this work, James is interested in how process and speculative approaches help us re-imagine the process of work so that it is more appropriate, makes more sense, and is more useful to communities beyond academia.
As part of the Stories in Transition project team, James; role is to lead the analysis and reflection on co-production with the researchers and veterans involved in the project. A key aspect of the project is understanding how co-production ‘happens’ in this specific context, and what is the impact on those taking part. In this sense, his role is about understanding who is involved in the process of creating knowledge about veterans' transition and how this takes place within and beyond our partner organisations.
Post-doctoral Research Fellow: Dr Katie Davies
Dr Katie Davies is a practice-led PhD supervisor and filmmaker, working with communities to explore the construction of collective identities through moving image.
Nationalism and violence often form a central critique for Katie's projects. Having worked with The UN Armistice Commission, The United States Forces in Korea, The Home Office and The House of Lords, she is interested in how moving image can produce new imagined communities and reclaim places and identities.
Katie is the lead filmmaker on the Stories in Transition project. She working closely with veterans from each of the three partner organisations, carrying out practice-led research to understand what films need to be produced and what stories need to be told. She leads the production team in pre-production, production, and editing of the films, working closely with members of the StoryLab research institute.
