Megan Hamilton is a PhD Candidate in the Defence Studies Department, under the supervision of Professors Jonathan Fennell and Niall Barr. She holds an Honours BA (History) from Wilfrid Laurier University (2021) and an MA (History) from the University of Waterloo (2022). Her MA was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

Her doctoral research is an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership project at KCL and the Imperial War Museum (IWM) that studies Second World War army training across the British Empire. It aims to understand how training methods were developed, disseminated, and synchronized across this multi-national force. Research for this project has been conducted across six countries and four continents.

Megan completed two professional development placements during her doctoral studies, the first being at the Australian War Memorial and the second being at the IWM. She is a regional director for the Second World War Research Group and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. She was the PGR Lead for the Sir Michael Howard Centre for the History of War from 2023-2025.

Research Interests

• Second World War
• Army training
• Wartime morale
• Imperial Defence
• Canadian history
• Military alliances

Thesis

'The Imperial Training Network: The Armies of Britain, the Dominions, and India, 1939-45'

Supervisors:

• Professor Jonathan Fennell
• Simon Offord
• Professor Niall Barr

Publications 

• Writing the History of the Dieppe Raid: The British-Canadian Historical Liaison Relationship in Five Documents. The Northern Mariner 31, no. 3 (Autumn 2021): 313-348.
• “The Vernon Military Camp and the Imperial Training Archipelago, 1939-45.” Canadian Military History 33, no. 1 (Spring 2024): 1-31.