Dr Jake Gasson is an Advanced Education Pathway (AEP) Lecturer in Defence Studies in the Defence Studies Department at King's College London. He completed a DPhil in History at Pembroke College, University of Oxford in 2024, where he specialised in the Macedonian Front of the First World War. His thesis examined how the soldiers of the British Salonika Force experienced and endured the psychological challenge posed by boredom. This received support from the Western Front Association, Society for Army Historical Research, and Salonika Campaign Society, and was awarded the André Corvisier Prize from the International Commission for Military History for the best PhD awarded in the field in 2024. He has also published on counterinsurgency, interallied relations, and morale in Macedonia.

After Oxford, he held postdoctoral positions at both King's College London and the National Army Museum, where his research focused on the service records of the British and Commonwealth armies of the Second World War. Alongside working on turning his thesis into a book, Jake’s current research primarily centres on the Second World War. He is currently a Co-Investigator on an ASTRID funded project examining wartime morale led by Professor Jonathan Fennell and conducted in collaboration with the Operational Research Branch of the British Army’s Land Forces Command. He is also currently investigating the social dynamics of wartime mobilisation in the context of the British Home Guard Auxiliary Units and the Italian army in North Africa.

Research Interests

• History of War
• Morale and Combat Motivation
• Mobilisation
• First World War
• Second World War

Articles

‘At Best Indifferent, and on the Whole Outright Bad?’: A Reassessment of Morale in the British Salonika Force, 1915-1918’, International Journal of Military History and Historiography (published online 4 March 2026).

'Encountering ‘the most remarkable army of all times’: Inter-Allied Relations and Military Hierarchies in Macedonia during the First World War’, War in History, Vol. 32, No. 3 (2025): 183-202.

‘The application of ‘Small Wars’ theory and experience by the British Army in Macedonia during the First World War’, Small Wars & Insurgencies, Vol. 35, No. 5 (2024): 777-806.

Book Chapters

‘'The most weird mixture of humanity’: British Views of Friends and Foes at the Onset of the Salonika Campaign, October-December 1915’, in Andrew Bamford (ed.), One Hundred Years of Army Historical Research: Proceedings of the SAHR Centenary Conference (Warwick: Helion, 2022): 181-205.

Courses

Jake teaches on a range of courses at the Joint Services Command and Staff College (part of the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom) and the Land Command and Staff College (part of the Land Warfare Centre).