Dr Iain Farquharson
Lecturer in Global Challenges – Security Pathway Lead

Research area(s)

Military History, War Studies, Military Education and Training, Military Culture, Institutional Cultural Change, Imperial and Commonwealth History, Wargaming, Organisational Resilience.

Research Interests

My research interests lie at the intersection of military history, organisational learning, and game-based approaches to knowledge and engagement. Building on extensive experience with military history, I maintain a long-standing focus on British and Imperial twentieth-century history, particularly the education, training, and adaptation of armed forces during periods of strategic and technological change. Drawing on theories of organisational culture and learning, my work explores how and why military organisations learn, the factors that enable or constrain that learning, and the ways in which institutions respond to shifting operational demands.

More recently, my interest in games as vehicles for learning has led me to examine their value as tools for public engagement with historical themes. This includes investigating how game-based experiences shape understanding, interpretation, and memory of the past. In parallel, my research considers the evolution of wargaming as both a professional practice within defence and non-defence establishments and an emerging academic methodology. I am particularly interested in how wargames can be designed, implemented, and assessed to support decision-making, understand organisational cultures and integrate learning processes.