Professor Christopher Dandeker

Head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy, King’s College London, UK

Visiting Professor / Military sociology

Biography

Christopher Dandeker studied at the University of Leicester, and after appointments at Sheffield Hallam University and, once again, at the University of Leicester, in 1990 he was appointed as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He was promoted to Professor of Military Sociology in 1997 and was Head of the Department of War Studies from 1997-2001. After sabbatical leave in 2001-2 he became Chairman of the Board of War Studies and of the War Studies Group in September 2002. Professor Dandeker has played a key role in the academic leadership and management of War Studies at King’s. He was assistant head of the Department of War Studies from 1994-7 and, as Head of Department from 1997-2001, led the Department to the successes of the highest ratings in the most recent RAE and Teaching Quality Assessment or Subject Review (2001). In 2005, he became Head of the School of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s College London.

Professor Dandeker is a Fellow of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS) and a member of its Council. He is also an Associate Editor of the Journal Armed Forces and Society. In addition, he served for some years until 2002 as a Vice–President of the Research Committee 01, Armed Forces and Conflict Resolution of the International Sociological Association and he remains a member of the ISA RC01 Board.

Professor Dandeker’s research in military sociology is located within the field of politics and international studies and focuses on all aspects of civil-military relations, broadly conceived. He has lectured at the Staff Colleges of many countries within and beyond Europe and in addition to academic studies has been commissioned by various government agencies in the UK and abroad on a consultancy basis. In 2000-01 he gave expert testimony to the British House of Commons Defence Committee Enquiry into the UK Government’s Strategic Defence Review, Policy for People. In December 2002, he was appointed an independent member of the Ministry of Defence’s Defence Science Advisory Council (DSAC). In developing his research as well as that of the Department of War Studies as a whole he has been successful in obtaining grants in aid of research from ESRC, the MacArthur Foundation as well as government agencies such as the Ministry of Defence and (as was) the Defence Evaluation Research Agency (DERA – now DSTL and Qinetic). Professor Dandeker has been invited to lecture at a wide range of military establishments such as the UK Joint Services Command and Staff College, the Royal College of Defence Studies, the Swedish National Defence College, the National Defence University in Taiwan and the National Defence College in Pakistan.

In July 2002, Professor Dandeker commenced a research project with Professor Simon Wessely of the Institute of Psychiatry at King’s College London on ‘Improving Cross Departmental Delivery of Services to UK Veterans’ for the Ministry of Defence, which was completed in April 2003 and was published in September 2003. With Professor Simon Wessely, and other colleagues in the newly established King’s Centre for Military Health Research (KCMHR), which is based in the Institute of Psychiatry and the Department of War Studies, he is engaged in a new study on the health and social well being of those military personnel who have served in the recent conflict in Iraq, and a range of other projects on service personnel issues. See the KCMHR website at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/kcmhr/

Professor Dandeker has written widely on the theme of armed forces and society as well as broader issues of social and political theory. Professor Dandeker's publications include books: (with T Johnson and C Ashworth) The Structure of Social Theory (Macmillan 1984), Surveillance Power and Modernity (Polity 1990) and, as editor, Nationalism and Violence (Transaction 1998), (with Bernard Boene), Les Armees en Europe, Decouverte Press Paris, 1998. He is also the author (with F. Paton) of The New Military: A Personnel Strategy for the British Armed Forces, London Defence Studies, 39, Centre for Defence Studies, Brassey's 1997. B. Boene, C. Dandeker, J. Kuhlmann, and J. van der Meulen, Facing Uncertainty. Report no 2. The Swedish Military in International Perspective, Försvarshögskolan Acta D5, Ledarskapsinstitutionen, Karlstad 2001.  

Professor Dandeker has also written widely in the field of military sociology on the post Cold War military including issues of personnel strategy, force structure and peacekeeping as well as broader questions concerning military power and the nation-state. Key publications include ‘A Farewell to Arms? The Military profession and the modern nation state’, in J Burk (ed), The Military in New Times: Adjusting Armed Forces to a Turbulent World (Westview) 1994,  ‘On the Need to be Different: Recent Trends in Military Culture,’ in H. Strachan (Ed), British Army Manpower and Society into the Twenty First Century, Frank Cass, 1999 and ‘The Overstretched Military’ in The Postmodern Military, Oxford University Press 2000, 32-50.edited by C. Moskos, J. Williams and D. R. Segal, Oxford University Press, 2000, and, with D. Mason,  ‘Diversity in the UK Armed Forces: the debate about the representation of Women and Ethnic Minority Groups,’ in J. Van Der Meulen and J. Soeters, Managing Diversity in Armed Forces: Experiences from Nine Countries, Tilberg University Press and Purdue University Press, 1999; (also with D. Mason) ‘The British Armed Services and the Participation of Minority Ethnic Communities: From Equal Opportunities to Diversity?’ The Sociological Review May 2001. C. Dandeker,  The Military in Democratic Societies, Society, Vol. 38, No. 6, September/October 2001, pp. 16-24.

Professor Dandeker’s latest work is C. Dandeker and L. Freedman, ‘The Armed Services’ Political Quarterly, Oct-December 2002, 465-75, (with D. Mason) ‘Diversifying the Uniform? The Participation of Minority Ethnic Communities in the Armed Services,’ Armed Forces and Society, Summer 2003 Vol. 29, No. 4, 481-508; and C. Dandeker, ‘Women Warriors’: the problems and prospects of gender integration in the British Army.’ (in French: ‘Les Femmes combattantes”: problèmes et perspectives de’intégration des femmes dans l’armée britannique’) Revue Francaise Sociologie, Vol. 44, No 4. October-December 2003. C Dandeker, S Wessely, A. Iversen and J Ross, ‘What’s in a name? Defining and caring for ‘veterans’: the United Kingdom from a comparative perspective.’ Armed Forces and Society, Fall, Vol. 32, No.1 2006. Amy Iversen, Vasilis Nikolaou, Neil Greenberg, Catherine Unwin, Lisa Hull, Mathew Hotopf, Christopher Dandeker, John Ross, and Simon Wessely, ‘What happens to British veterans when they leave the armed forces?’ The European Journal of Public Health Advance Access published online on March 8, 2005. A Iversen MRCP, C Dyson MSc, N Smith BA, N Greenberg MRCPsych. R Walwyn MSc., C Unwin MSc., Lisa Hull BSc., M Hotopf PhD., C Dandeker PhD,’ Goodbye and Good luck’; the mental health needs and treatment experiences of British Ex-service Personnel. British Journal of Psychiatry, June 1 2005, Vol. 186, No 6.  S Thomas, N Greenberg, A Iversen, L Hull, C Dandeker. S Wessely, Serving in Bosnia made me appreciate living in Bristol, Military Medicine. Some of the findings from the work he is conducting with colleagues in the King’s Centre for Military Health Research on the and well being of military personnel in Iraq will appear in The Lancet on 17th May 2006. Professor Dandeker is writing a book on ‘The New Military’ for Polity Press.