DrSarah Dixon Smith

I am a Research Associate in the Dept of Bioengineering and the Armed Services Trauma Rehabilitation Outcome Study [ADVANCE].

My work explores the long-term outcomes of early medical and surgical trauma care interventions in British veterans in the years after injury, particularly the impact of blood products, analgesics and casualty evacuation. I have a background in historical research, with degrees in archaeology and public history, and spent several years as a museum curator. I received my PhD from Imperial College London and the Centre for Blast Injury Studies for my work in blast injury and chronic pain, focusing on the very long-term impact of conflict wounds and using a longitudinal dataset to track the medical information of 100 First World War amputee veterans across seven decades.

I am particularly interested in chronic pain, trauma-related premature ageing, and the use of Applied History in veterans’ healthcare, exploring whether historical data can be used to benefit veterans with similar injuries from the most recent Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts.

In addition to my work on medical outcomes, I have also written on institutional memory, 19th century neurology, the history of anaesthesia, and the unlikely connection between amputee veterans and designer raincoats.