Omar Al-Dewachi
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Social Science
Leaving the military is usually studied as a health and employment problem: how veterans fare medically and how they slot back into civilian society. This dissertation research project argues that something central gets left out, namely the intense bonds formed with fellow service members.
- Fields
Social Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
veterans
U.S. Marine Corps
military transition
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2026
What they work on
- Document how bonds with fellow service members shape memory and life after service, through in-depth interviews with a representative sample drawn from 150 former U.S. Marine Corps combat veterans.
- Compare reported experiences of veterans who attend veteran group events with those who do not, using participation in gatherings where shared military experience is collectively revisited.
- Assess how common particular health issues are within this group of former combat veterans and how post-military occupations and life paths reshape their interpretations of service.
- Advance theories of affect, memory and belonging in psychological anthropology by analyzing the relationship between ritualized shared experience and veterans' sense of self.
More about the research
The question is how those relationships shape the way veterans remember their service and how those memories shape life afterward.
Why it matters
Transition out of the military is a difficult period for many combat veterans. By showing how continued contact with former comrades and participation in veteran gatherings relate to health and to how service is remembered, the work could inform how the Marine Corps and the Department of Veterans Affairs design support for veterans leaving service, and could help future Marine veterans going through the same transition.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
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The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
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