We are three Churchill Fellows, a national network of 3,800 dynamic change makers, who are inspiring change in every part of UK life. As a team, we have extensive research and work experience in therapeutic talking practices and moral injury and have joined together to create a response to the rising prevalence of this condition.

Our Team

  • Simon Edwards

    Simon Edwards

    After service in the British Army in the 15th/19th Hussars and Light Dragoons, Simon opened a restaurant in Bath before running the Pierre Victoire restaurant chain.

    He founded a charity, Believe, pioneering coaching and mentoring in prisons and contributing to prison policy through the Centre of Social Justice report, Locked Up Potential. He was the co-founder of Mowgli Mentoring, supporting social, economic and political change through the provision of mentoring services for entrepreneurs in the Middle East and Africa. He is a director of Urban Pursuit, supporting young people excluded from school. He has been a board member of Friska and Bristol Distilling Co.

    He founded and chairs Serve On, a search and rescue charity that deployed a team to the Turkish earthquake, but which also provides leadership training for young people. He designed and delivered a programme for Help for Heroes to support veterans in their transition to civilian life particularly as related to mental health which led to a Churchill Fellowship. His report Soldier of Hope has inspired a focus on Moral Injury. Working with Sophie Redlin and Alison O’Connor, he has established Moral Injury Partnership to develop prevention and resolution to this growing problem. He recently travelled to Ukraine to research the need for support in this area and is working towards the creation of a ‘Train-the-Trainer’ programme there.

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  • Dr Sophie Redlin

    Dr Sophie Redlin

    Sophie Redlin is a medical doctor, researcher and filmmaker with specialisms in family practice, mental health, remote and expedition medicine. Her clinical practice as a GP is based in London where she works between a clinic in Kensington and a service for homeless patients in Soho. As an expedition doctor she has accompanied research and youth development expeditions all over the world, most recently supporting sailing voyages to Antarctica and the Arctic.

    She is currently conducting research in the field of medical anthropology at University College London on global cross-cultural approaches to mental healthcare with a focus on North American indigenous perspectives on wellbeing. Her research aims to highlight the impacts of culture and community on health and investigate the potential for respectful application of traditional knowledge to Western medical models. She has an interest in participatory video practices and uses filmmaking as a modality wherever possible. Sophie applies her research findings directly to her role as a mental health and suicide prevention trainer and designs tailor-made mental health teaching programmes for expedition teams and remote workers.

    As a healthcare worker herself, she is particularly passionate about staff wellbeing and in 2021 co-founded ‘Moral Injury Partnership’ with Simon Edwards and Alison O’Connor in response to the increasing prevalence of Moral Injury in frontline workers.The retreat programme and teaching materials that they have created draw respectfully on her research into indigenous perspectives on health.

  • Alison O’Connor

    Alison is a consultative supervisor with 25 years experience of groupwork, therapy and applied theatre. She has been privileged to work in diverse settings, including prisons, Romanian orphanages, in substance misuse, with older adults, military veterans and survivors of complex trauma. She worked for several years as Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in Counselling and Psychotherapy at University of South Wales. She is the Co-Founder of Re-Live, an Arts and Health charity, creating Life Story Theatre with older adults and people affected by trauma and adversity. Alison and Re-Live Co-founder, Karin Diamond, received an Arts and Health Practice Award from the Royal Society of Public Health for creative work with military families. They also received an award for International Leadership in Arts and Health, from Arts and Health Australia. They are currently writing a book, Creating Life Story Theatre: A Guide for Applied Theatre Practitioners, which will be published by Methuen in 2024.

    Alison's Churchill Fellowship, Transforming Trauma: Moral Injury and the Arts with military veterans, families and communities, opened the door to a creative, compassionate approach to wellbeing which links the personal, the political and the spiritual. She is delighted to be working with Sophie and Simon, developing a retreat-based programme of restorative support. Alison is committed to enhancing practitioner wellbeing by co-creating reflective support networks and experiences that allow people in the helping professions to be well in the work they do. Teachers, nurses, doctors, care workers, police, paramedics, prison staff, military personnel, all who work at the human frontline. The work hurts at times. Support is vital.