Tony Pollard is never far from the boom and rattle of war:

past, present, future, and fictional. Not only has he just finished acting as historical adviser on Outlander, the American fantasy drama set in the build-up to Culloden, he has edited a book about the Death Railway in Burma, is writing another one about the First World War, has made a new television programme about Robert The Bruce's little-known invasion of Ireland, and next year he is off to the Falklands. War is what Pollard does. War is what he is.

And there should not be any surprise about that. Pollard is 49 and had the classic 1970s male, militarised childhood: he read Commando, he made Airfix models, and he loved war films. By the time of the Falklands War in 1982, he was old enough to join the Army - and almost did, before studying archaeology at university instead and going on to become a leader in the field.

His most famous achievement was excavating the graves on the Western Front of the First World War at Fromelles, France. "I looked into the faces of the dead when I was excavating those graves," he says.

One of his new projects also concerns the First World War and, in particular, the role played in it by Glasgow University, where Pollard is director of the Centre For Battlefield Archaeology. More than 4,500 staff, students and alumni of the university served in the conflict, with the university acting as a recruiting ground in the early phase of 1914.

"Sometimes, the pictures of the university's office training corps from that time look like the logo of Camp Coffee," says Pollard. "It was all seen as a bit of a wheeze."

That could not last and when the realisation hit that it would not be all over by Christmas and the war intensified, Glasgow University became a vital training ground for officers, as well as providing many of the most brilliant doctors and nurses for the medical corp. "A lot of the doctors were way up front. I have excavated the bodies of Allied soldiers from the Western Front and they still have their bandages on. They were being treated while still in combat."

Pollard will tell some of these stories in his new book, Glasgow University's Great War, as well as relating the effect the war had on students and staff. "If you look through the archives," says Pollard, "you can see there was definitely a pacifist movement at the university - in the student magazine, you have male staff and students complaining about being given white feathers. The war also changed the university - there were many more female students and teachers. But then the men came back and you had conflict for places."

Pollard sees his book on Glasgow's part in the war as part of the greater commemorations of the centenary and a contribution to the debate about whether it was a just war or not, although he is certainly not a member of the revisionist school that is attempting to overturn the widespread belief the war was futile and incompetently fought by chinless wonders.

"There is a revisionist school who have been trying to overturn the, let's face it, at times inaccurate 'Lions led by donkeys'/Blackadder school of history. At Fromelles, I have seen what a hand grenade and a machine gun does to the human body so it is difficult for me to share any enthusiasm for the grand project that was the First World War."

Instead, Pollard's enthusiasm is for telling the story of what war can do to men physically and emotionally. Next year he will be going to the Falklands with some veterans to explore the idea that excavating the sites of conflict can help soldiers recover from their experiences.

The Falklands War has always held a particular fascination for Pollard. At the time, Pollard was growing up in Oban - he was born in Macclesfield but moved to Scotland when he was a young boy - and joining the Army and going to Sandhurst for officer training looked like a good option for a boy who loved war and the history of war.

"Right through childhood I was fascinated by war," he says. "I was reading military history books when I was in primary school. It was a much more militarised childhood then and round about the time of the Falklands, I almost joined up and went to Sandhurst. Funnily enough, I changed my mind because I realised people were getting killed."

Pollard says he sometimes has regrets about that decision and says he may have ended up as an archaeologist specialising in conflict as a way of dealing with his choice not to become a soldier. He quotes Samuel Johnson, who said "every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea".

"I do sometimes regret the decision not to go to Sandhurst," he says. "But I have a slight issue with authority, as anybody at the university will tell you. I think I would probably have enjoyed being a soldier overall and would probably still be in it now. But I look at the difficulties soldiers have when they go into civvy street - what do you do? And that is before you even take account of combat stress."

Pollard believes combat stress from Afghanistan will cause a serious problem in the UK, but it will take at least 10 years to show up. "I am very concerned the British Government is not doing enough about it, but there is a great interest in academia about this.

"The latest research is that it can be 10, 12, 14 years before it hits home. The American government is putting in $100m into brain trauma research in war, but in Britain there has been a degree of burying our heads in the sand, even though it is now widely recognised that 10 years from now there's going to be thousands of cases."

Pollard hopes he can contribute to a solution to the problem with his Falklands project next year. In the meantime, he has a few other projects bubbling away. One of them is Outlander, the fantasy television series set in 18th century Scotland that has been filming in Glasgow and the Highlands, for which Pollard has been acting as historical adviser.

"They were interested in me not just because I know about the 18th century but because I know that you have to take liberties with history at times when writing fiction," says Pollard. "There was scope for me to fix things, or ameliorate and easing the path and come up with reasons why something might be happening." He is sure the series will be a big hit.

Another project is the book Life On The Death Railway: The Memoirs Of A British PoW by Stuart Young. Pollard edited the book, which is the latest contribution to a growing number of memoirs on British experiences as prisoners of war in Japan, but it does have a rather striking part of the story to add.

"I have read most of the published accounts and I think there is a place for all of them, but this one was the only one I have come across that overtly talks about homosexuality in the camps. Clearly, it is going to be happening but nobody talks about it." Pollard says he would also like to organise a service at the university for the lesbian and gay community who were involved in the First World War, but the problem is trying to discover the names. "We don't know who they are because it was a dark secret."

His other big project is a new BBC programme about Robert The Bruce's invasion of Ireland in 1315. It will be broadcast some time next year.

"The invasion was led by Edward Bruce, Robert The Bruce's brother and he was there on and off until 1318. They were basically trying to conquer Ireland, but Edward eventually died in 1318, killed in battle. It went on and on, bad conditions, the alliances broke up. It was kind of like their Vietnam."

Pollard draws the parallel because he knows it is accurate but also because he knows war is a constant. "When I started out," he says, "I was looked as askance for studying conflict but now there is a fascination. There is also a realisation that war will always be with us."