The Moral Injury Lab:

Projects and Publications

Current projects

Critique of the Standard Model of Moral Injury

In a recent publication, we formalize and assess the dominant conceptualization of moral injury in clinical research. Clinical research tends to situate moral injuries in our heads. In this view, moral injuries are caused by events that run contrary to our moral beliefs or conflict with our personal moral codes. We instead conceive of moral injuries as occurring in the world, in our moral relationships with others, and not merely in our heads. Read more here.

Are You Gaslighting me? The Role of Affective Habits in Epistemic Friction

Dr. Munch-Jurisic analyzes gaslighting and its role in forming emotional habits. The experience gaslighting often produces the expectation of further emotional manipulation. This expectation presents a unique and underexplored epistemic obstacle for victims of gaslighting.

Indeterminacy in Emotion Perception: Disorientation as the Norm

Cases of moral injury demonstrate that our emotions often are not transparent to us. Dr. Munch-Jurisic uses this insight in a recent publication to argue against the standard assumption in contemporary psychology and philosophy of emotion that we typically know what we feel.

Moral Injury and Outlaw Emotions

In progress… Dr. Munch-Jurisic’s upcoming article on the difficulty of understanding the emotional disturbances that result from moral injury.

Past projects

The Experience of War: Moral Transformation, Injury, and Repair

NEH Grant (2016-2018)

In 2016, Dr. Acampora was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) as part of the “Dialogues on the Experience of War” initiative.

The project included a series of reading groups on moral experiences in war, staged throughout New York City and led by an expert panel of facilitators. It also included public events and a culminating conference. As part of the project, Acampora also taught an interdisciplinary honors seminar. Subsequently, she supported related activities, also funded by the NEH, at Emory University.

Here are links to some of the events from “The Experience of War: Moral Transformation, Injury, and Repair”:

Dirty Work

Dr. Munch-Jurisic’s review of Dirty Work by Eyal Press, with reflections on the concept and its intersections with moral injury. Published in the Danish Newspaper, Dagbladet Information.