The Moral Injury Lab’s Research Team
Christa Acampora
Principal Investigator
Buckner W. Clay Dean of the College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia
After spending several decades working on moral psychology in modern European philosophy (largely on topics arising from Nietzsche’s work), I became interested in moral injury and invested time in understanding and engaging in discussions in the clinical context. I built relationships and collaborations with some key researchers in that area, and I organized a series of public discussions on the theme that included the humanistic philosophical contexts of moral experience. I’m now working on a framework for articulating the philosophical significance of moral injury (as an important topic in moral philosophy generally and relevant for understanding morality more broadly), and I’m writing a book that examines moral injury in the contexts of experiences of war, refugee experiences, healthcare contexts (particularly as evident in COVID-19), and experiences with and arising from institutionalized and structural racism.
Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic
Research Associate
PhD, Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, 2016
I specialize in the in the field of emotions and negative affect with a particular focus on the implications for majority-minority relations. My new book Perpetrator Disgust: The Moral Limits of Gut Feelings (Oxford University Press, 2022) explores the connection between aversive physiological reactions, emotions and morality. Before coming to U.V.A., where I am working on the emotional dimensions of moral injury, I have worked on the physiological detrimental effects of discrimination and the relationship between biases and aversive affect (discomfort, stress, anxieties) at Aarhus and Roskilde University. Before my turn to academia, I’ve worked as Outreach Officer at the Holocaust and Genocide Department at the Danish Institute for International Studies and spent some time as an intern for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
Personal Website: https://sites.google.com/view/ditte-marie-munch-jurisic
Andrew Culbreth
Affiliated Researcher
PhD, Philosophy, Emory University, 2020
My research stands at the intersection of ancient philosophy, moral psychology, and ethics. At the most general level, my work aims to show how ancient philosophers can help us understand our ethical and emotional lives today. As a research fellow in the Moral Injury Lab, I’m especially interested in understanding how the concept of virtue can shed light on moral damage, how shame relates to moral injury, and how hope might lead to moral repair. In exploring these questions, as with the rest of my research, I find inspiration in ancient philosophy and literature, especially tragedy. Beyond my work with the Moral Injury Lab, I am working on a project that explains how Plato and Aristotle understand the value of hope and its proper place in our lives—a project that emerges directly out of my doctoral dissertation.
Personal website: https://sites.google.com/view/andrew-culbreth