Dr David Jackson is a former Royal Marine Commando, medically discharged at 36 after 21 years’ service in Northern Ireland and the Falklands. Following a long period of medical objectification, he was diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety, which shaped both his personal journey and later professional focus.
He retrained as a psychotherapist, working first with children and young people, then exclusively with war veterans and families. Alongside practice, he pursued a sustained academic path: BSc (Hons) Psychology (1995), MA Counselling Studies (2002), and an EdD at the University of Bristol (2010), where he developed an autoethnographic, creative, and collaborative research voice.
David’s work blends creative writing, poetry, song, film, and multimodal research to explore veteran identity, trauma, and becoming. He founded Veteran to Veteran (Turning It Around), contributed as an academic consultant to Lord Ashcroft’s Veterans Transition Review, and worked on major collaborative projects including Military Afterlives and Stories in Transition.
Since 2016 he has performed internationally in Minefield/Campo Minado, a documentary theatre piece bringing Argentine and British Falklands veterans together. His creative portfolio now includes film direction, published poetry, and a veterans’ music project producing three albums of original work.
David continues to write autoethnographically — still filling his Moleskine journals, now in many colours — as part of an ongoing journey of identity, creativity, and autonomy.