City St George’s hosts first conference on advancing submariner resilience

City St George’s University hosted the inaugural Submarine Service People Hub Conference: Partnering for Progress, bringing senior Royal Navy stakeholders together with academic partners to shape the future of people-centred resilience in one of the military’s most demanding operational domains.

The event, convened and led academically by City St George’s research consortium in partnership with Affinity Health at Work and the University of East Anglia (UEA), marked a significant milestone in City St George’s growing national role in applying social science to strengthen workforce sustainability and operational effectiveness across the UK Submarine Service.

Held on 18 November 2025, the conference brought forty senior representatives from across the Submarine Service, military directorates, health and wellbeing teams, data and policy functions, and academic researchers into the same room for a full day of structured analysis, collaborative design, and strategic alignment. The aim: to establish an integrated, evidence-based approach for addressing the people challenges that directly affect submariner wellbeing, retention, and operational readiness.

The event was co-designed and facilitated by City St George’s academic team in this strategic research collaboration, headed up by Dr Jutta Tobias Mortlock with Dr Denvar Summers and Dr Anke Plagnol in the Department of Psychology, in partnership with Professor Jo Yarker from Affinity and her team, as well as Professor Kristy Sanderson from UEA.

Senior Navy stakeholders praised the “leadership, vision and advocacy” of the City St George’s team, and the “privilege” of engaging in such a focused day of collaborative problem-solving.

What participants gained

Feedback across the day underscored several key benefits:

• A clearer, shared understanding of the human and organisational pressures affecting submariners.
• Practical experience in applying social-science frameworks to military contexts.
• A structured, evidence-based set of actionable priorities to inform People Hub strategy and resourcing.

One senior participant captured the sentiment at the end of the day succinctly: “An excellent day and what a privilege to have such an engaged group of Navy partners.”

A strategic moment for City St George’s

For City St George’s University, the conference represents a major demonstration of its growing reputation as a national hub for applied social science supporting the military. The University’s leadership of the multi-institution research consortium — and its role as host and intellectual driver of the conference — positions City St George’s as a trusted partner to the Royal Navy on some of its most pressing people challenges.

The People Hub conference also reflects the University’s mission to combine rigorous scientific inquiry with real-world impact. By convening senior military decision-makers and facilitating evidence-based coordination on Submariner resilience, City St George’s has made a tangible contribution to the Navy’s mission to Lead-Fight-Win through people-centred operational capability.

Dr Tobias Mortlock, Principal Investigator and City St George’s research consortium lead, said at the end of the conference:

“This is what partnering for progress really looks and feels like — a genuinely shared commitment to understanding the lived experience of submariners, and to turning evidence into coordinated action that will make a real difference to submariners’ wellbeing, resilience and future readiness. We are proud that City St George’s could bring together this community of leaders, practitioners and researchers to co-create solutions that matter.”