CHACR Management Board

The CHACR is governed by a sub-committee of the Army Executive Committee (ExCo) to enable it to support the development of the conceptual component of fighting power across the Army and inform executive decision making. The CHACR programme of work is therefore aligned to key ExCo priorities but able to flex to examine emerging issues.

The CHACR Management Board, focussed at the two star (Major General) level, consists of the Assistant Chief of the General Staff, Director Futures, Director Personnel, Chief of Staff Field Army, Director Land Warfare, Director Leadership, Chief of Staff Home Command, Head of Strategy, Head of International Communication and Engagement and the Army Sergeant Major.

The Team

The Director

During 34 years of military service, and nine operational tours, Andrew Sharpe commanded on operations in all ranks from second-lieutenant to brigadier. He left the British Army as a Major General, completing his military career as the Director of the UK MoD’s independent think-tank: the DCDC. For three years he ran the UK Chief of Defence Staff’s Strategic Advisory Panel.

Head of Historical Analysis

Professor Matthias Strohn is the Head of the Historical Analysis Programme at the CHACR. He is also a Visiting Professor in Military Studies at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Buckingham. He holds a Master’s degree and a Doctorate from the University of Oxford, and was awarded a level 7 degree in Strategic Management and Leadership from the Chartered Management Institute.

Head of Conflict Research

Professor Andrew Stewart was a member of the Defence Studies Department at the UK Defence Academy from 2003-2019. He was successively Land Historian on the Higher Command and Staff College and Director of Academic Studies at the Royal College of Defence Studies before being appointed Professor of Modern Conflict History. Immediately prior to joining CHACR, he taught at the Royal Danish Defence College.

Executive Officer

As the Executive Officer, Major Luke Turrell is the senior military representative inside the Centre for Historical Analysis and Conflict Research. He has served on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and deployed globally in a cross-government crisis response and liaison role. He holds a BA in War Studies and an MA in Strategic Communication, both from King’s College London and was selected as a Chief of the General Staff Fellow in 2021.

Editor

Formerly the editor-in-chief of Soldier, Andrew Simms guided the title to the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ best internal magazine in Britain award in 2011, 2010 and 2009 and the Institute of Internal Communications’ best internal news magazine accolade in 2011 and 2010. During his tenure with the Ministry of Defence, he reported from Kosovo, Macedonia and Afghanistan, and was embedded with troops in Iraq. 

Associate Fellow

Dr Jonathan Trevor is a noted management researcher, author, advisor, speaker and teacher on strategy and organisational alignment. Jonathan is a tenured Associate Professor of Management Practice at the University of Oxford’s Said Business School and a Visiting Professor at Waseda University, Tokyo. He teaches on the Oxford MBA, Executive MBA and international executive education programmes and publishes in leading journals.

Associate Fellow

Dr Tim Clack is the Chingiz Gutseriev Fellow at the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, UK. He researches the drivers of conflict including: identities, cultural destruction, information/propaganda, and climate change. Tim is the Director of the Climate Change & (In)Security Project, an Oxford-CHACR collaboration exploring the insecurities created by climate change and how to respond to them.

Associate Fellow

James Sladden is an historian and conflict researcher. As a high-risk adviser to international media including the BBC, ITN and CNN, he has supported journalists in hostile environments around the world. James was an international monitoring officer for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, and the UN Verification and Inspection Mechanism for Yemen (UNVIM).

Research Fellow

Sebastian Raj Pender is a Research Fellow at CHACR, working on the shifting dynamics of the Indo-Pacific Region. He is particularly interested in India’s emerging role in the region, and the geopolitical implications of India’s evolving maritime security strategy. Before joining CHACR, Sebastian held research appointments at Balliol College, University of Oxford; the School of Advanced Studies, University of London; and the International Centre of Advanced Studies in New Delhi.

Associate Fellow

Dr Richard Warnes is a consultant on defence and security, working part-time for Vedette Consulting Limited (VCL). His interests lie in the fields of terrorism and irregular warfare, and he regularly writes and lectures on both. He has a background in international relief and both military and policing service. Richard was also previously an analyst at RAND Europe and conducted field evaluations of a counter-insurgency capacity building programme in Iraq and Afghanistan over a six-year period.

Staff Officer

Captain Peter Goodman is a Staff Officer within the CHACR. He has served in Army Education Centres across Europe and spent two years as an embedded learning and development adviser in the Middle East. He holds a BA in Politics, an MSc in Education and is currently studying an MLitt in Terrorism and Political Violence.

The views expressed in all the products, articles and papers produced by the CHACR are always those of the various authors, and thus not a reflection of any officially held view, be it of the British Army or wider Defence or Government.

The chief purpose of the CHACR is to gather and present a wide range of views and perspectives to inform the Army, contributing to decisions concerning future strategy, concepts, capability and operations. The CHACR’s primary activity is to study the enduring nature and changing character of conflict on land by conducting a systematic programme of research and analysis into past and current (and possible future) operations.

It also acts as a hub for engagement with academics and think-tanks, and for promoting internal study of the profession of arms, thereby helping to enhance the Army’s ‘conceptual component’. In this role the CHACR acts as a forum for debate on matters relevant to the Army, enabling military personnel and other experts to express their views freely and securely. It also supports an array of conceptual activities, ranging from staff rides and battlefield studies to the editorship of the British Army’s internal professional journal, The British Army Review.

In all of the above roles the CHACR acts not just as a champion for individual ‘soldier-scholars’, but as a catalyst for the promotion of a ‘brains-based’ approach throughout the Army. In short, the CHACR promotes the notion that it is as important to ensure that an army is not out-thought as it is to ensure that it is not out-fought.

The independence and objectivity of the CHACR enables it to fulfil a critical analysis role, challenging conventional wisdom and testing evolving concepts and proposed plans.