Dr Laura Palmer

Dr Laura Palmer is a Lecturer at King’s Centre for Military Health Research, King’s College London. Laura teaches the module ‘Geographies of trauma’ for the MSc Global Mental Health and on other postgraduate courses within the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience.

Laura completed her degree in BA Social & Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge in 2009, where she specialised in Social Anthropology. Laura completed a MSc in Psychology at the University of Greenwich in 2014, and joined KCL in 2015 to study her PhD in alcohol misuse among UK Armed Forces personnel. Since then, Laura has worked as a postdoctoral researcher leading on a number of projects, including an exploration into the trajectories and phenomenology of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in the UK Armed Forces.

Laura currently supervises PhD students in the field of military and forensic mental health. Laura has also led modules for the MSc War & Psychiatry focusing upon extreme trauma in civilian contexts, as well as supervising BSc, MSc and MBBS students.

Research Interests

Laura is a mixed methods researcher and conducts both epidemiological and qualitative analyses. Her research interests lie in cultural psychiatry, cultural manifestations of traumatic stress and anthropological perspectives of mental health problems.

Teaching

• MSc War & Psychiatry