What Have We Learned? Research Intersections in Moral Injury

An interdisciplinary conference taking place in person in Durham, UK, on 20-22 April 2026

With the 1994 publication of "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character", Jonathan Shay’s reflections on the moral trauma that combatants experience focused attention on the phenomenon that he would eventually describe as ‘moral injury’.  Since then, moral injury has been observed in contexts from military veterans and law enforcement personnel to veterinarians and healthcare workers to refugees and survivors of abuse. It has also been conceptualised, studied, and researched in clinical, religious, anthropological, sociological and philosophical disciplines, among others.

What is clear in the decades of research that have followed Shay’s work is that these different contexts and disciplinary perspectives have illuminated different aspects of moral injury in ways that are critically helpful in understanding it and in exploring pathways to recovery. Moreover, the interdisciplinary research environment around moral injury is increasingly shaped by helpful collaborations between different types of researchers from different backgrounds, often using different conceptual languages to explore, define and describe the contours and contexts of moral injury.  

This conference seeks to lift up these intersections of work on moral injury around a cluster of questions:

• What do we learn from the intersection of different disciplinary approaches?
• Where do we find commonalities in the experience of moral injury amongst different contexts? Conversely, in what ways do certain contexts produce uniquely morally injurious experiences?
• What does this all mean for processes of repair, either as individuals or collectively?

 

Programme information

Plenary sessions

We are pleased to be welcoming Dr Victoria Williamson to give a plenary session. Victoria is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, Research Fellow at King’s College London, and President of the UK Psychological Trauma Society. Her research focuses on psychological adjustment after traumatic events and she has published extensively on moral injury suffered in a wide variety of occupational and non-occupational contexts and approaches to prevention and intervention for moral injury-related mental health difficulties.

In addition, there will be:

• A plenary welcome by Brian Powers and Wendy Cooper (International Centre for Moral Injury)
• A panel session on moral injury and the DSM, featuring Sarah Troughton (NHS psychiatrist) and Mark Layson (interdisciplinary researcher and emergency services chaplain, Australia)
• A closing discursive session

Short papers

We will have a rich variety of presentations from researchers working in the arts, humanities, sciences and social sciences, people with lived experience of moral injury and chaplains, psychologists and others with practical experiences of care for those with moral injury. 

Moral injury and the present and future of Ukraine

Simon Edwards (Hopefull Future Ukraine):
Hopefull Future Ukraine: Repairing moral injury – the first 12 months

Alexander Negrov (Hodos Institute and Eastern European Institute of Theology) & Roger Gill (Durham University):
Moral injury beyond the battlefield: Traces of moral injury in the leadership narratives of non-military leaders in wartime Ukraine (2022–2025)

Reconceptualising moral injury: Examining what we know and what we’ve missed

Shannon Allen (Northumbria University Newcastle):
Exploring a value-centric and holistic approach to moral injury prevention and intervention among UK Service Police veterans and other UK military veterans

Michael Yandell (Soul Repair Center, Brite Divinity School):
Vocabularies of moral injury: Accidents, gaps and boundaries

Falon Smith (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) et al.:
Multidisciplinary perspectives on conceptualisation and care for moral injury: A qualitative study with subject matter experts

Exploring moral injury: Self and mind

Cherlyn Jones (Landnam Warrior – a non-profit veteran service organisation):
Archetype of the warrior/shaman: Lessons across time, praxis across disciplines

Stephen Radley (University of Roehampton):
Seeing with the eyes of the heart: An interdisciplinary psychological and theological approach towards moral repair through the integration of the emotional self and mind

Military chaplaincy, ethical leadership & moral repair

Nicola Frail (British Army and Durham University) & David Smith (British Army):
Chaplaincy approaches to raising conceptual awareness of moral injury in the British Army

Aaron Fuller (Evangelical Lutheran Church in America):
“The Bathsheba syndrome” revisited: Reframing ethical leadership through the lens of moral injury and collective repair

Conceiving moral injury from the military perspective and exploring recovery praxis in veterans

Natalie Rambish (United States Air Force):
Combatant Institution Proximity Framework as a tool for understanding moral injury in war 

Sara Lapsley (Veterans Transition Network, Vancouver):
Lessening the impact of moral injury with therapeutic enactment: Results from the Veterans Transition Network

Chris Kellock (British Army):
Sustaining the moral component: Moral attrition, moral injury and spiritual fitness in special operation forces

Moral injury in healthcare

Andrew Jarvis (Holdfast Counselling, Canada):
Proposal for facilitated periodic peer support and skills-based small groups as treatment for moral distress and moral injury amongst nurses

Tamsin Josty (integrative counsellor and former consultant paediatrician):
Moral injury and moral healing within the ‘dysfunctional family’ of the NHS: A reflexive thematic analysis of therapists’ work with morally injured healthcare workers

Martyn Griffin (University of Sheffield), Peter Hamilton (Durham University), Dr Nicki Credland (Teesside University), Robert McMurray (University of Sheffield) & Oonagh Hamilton (Northumbria University Newcastle):
COVID's hidden scars: Repairing moral injury in critical care nursing

Moral injury in the church

Maggi Creese (Diocese of Newcastle, UK) & Keith Chappell (University of Sunderland):
Envisioning recovery from moral injury in the context of church-related abuse: Findings of the evaluation and impact study of Jagged Edges

Ioannis Athanasiou (Church of England and Goldsmiths, University of London):
Power, betrayal and moral injury: Survivor participation as moral repair in Christian faith communities

Contextual studies of moral injury

Alice M. Nah (Durham University) & Martin David Jones (University of York):
Moral injury and commitment in human rights activism

Peter Kingori (Kenya Methodist University) & Ruth Mburu (The Presbyterian University of East Africa):
Moral injuries in teachers redeployed in low-resource, crisis and conflict-affected contexts

Sharon McDonnell (Postvention Trust and University of Manchester), Gary Crookes, Maureen Grindley & Jo Doyle:
Prison suicide and moral injury

Amelia Pearson (University of Manchester):
“I felt like I was complicit in harming people”: A focus group exploration of the concept of moral injury in social work

Michael Drusano (In-Sight Collaborative) et al.:
Moral injury among humanitarian aid personnel: A preliminary examination and associations with rumination and mental health

Processing moral injury and envisioning recovery

Richard La Fleur (University of West Georgia) & Marvin Westwood (University of British Columbia):
Envisioning and exploring recovery from moral injury

Heather Fudala (Virginia Commonwealth University Health System) et al.:
Moral injury as political and ethical critique: Lessons from frontline critical care clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic

John Gordon Sennett (author and volunteer in the Russo-Ukrainian War):
Narrative processing for moral injury

Moral injury recovery in praxis

Tim Feely (Registered psychologist: trauma therapy):
Reframing recovery: An interdisciplinary, practice-based eight-dimension model for moral injury in civilian frontline and institutional contexts

Dimple Dhabalia (author and founder, Roots in the Clouds):
From restoration to regeneration: Spiritual ecology and collective care as response to collective moral injury and institutional betrayal

Moral injury and its effect on families

Corinna Priest (Postvention Trust):
Understanding moral injury when families receive information from the coroner after a suicide: A review of the research

Michael Hallett (University of Exeter and Jones Group International):
J.D. Salinger’s “Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut” and the impact of military moral injury on a family: A case study

Moral injury and ties to culture and the past

Shona Buchanan (University of Exeter):
Mr Punch, the unrepentant narrative

Tiia Sudenkaarne (University of Lapland) & Mwenza Blell (Newcastle University):
On morality of ghosts: Discussing moral injury with haunting

Moral injury integrations

Angela Marques Filipe (Durham University):
Reconceptualising eco-anxiety: An interdisciplinary framework on climate emotion, exhaustion and moral injury

Mark Layson (NSW/ACT Disaster Recovery Chaplaincy Network and Charles Sturt University), Nikki Jamieson (Moral Injury Australia) & Lindsay Carey (La Trobe University, Australia):
Moral injury as workplace harm: Integrating psychosocial safety, spiritual distress and organisational ethics in responding to potentially morally injurious events

Atsushi Shibaoka (University of Divinity, Australia):
Interdisciplinarity enfleshed: Synergy towards moral repair

Plenary short paper

Stephen Robbins (British Army and Church of England, retired):
The Omagh Bomb: A personal reflection

 

When and where

The conference will take place at Durham University in the North East of England. The venue will be St Chad's College (pictured) which is in the historic city centre and 20 metres from Durham's World Heritage Site which comprises the magnificent Norman cathedral and castle in their dramatic position on top of the steep wooded banks of the River Wear.

The conference will run from 1.15pm on Monday 20 April to 1.15pm on Wednesday 22 April 2026.

 

Registration and costs

Registration is open until 11.59pm GMT on Thursday 26 March 2026. The standard registration fee is 260 GBP; students are eligible to register for the subsidised registration fee of 190 GBP. This registration fee includes refreshments, dinner on 20 April, and lunch and dinner on 21 April. Please note that this does not include overnight accommodation and the overnight accommodation that was available as part of the registration process is fully booked at the time of writing; however, St Chad's College is in Durham city centre so there are plenty of places to stay nearby.

To book your place at the conference, please visit our conference registration webpage, click on "Book Event", and follow the instructions. 

If someone is booking on your behalf, they will need to know: (a) your full name including personal title, (b) your affiliation as you would like it shown on your name badge, (c) any special dietary requirements (including vegetarian), and (d) any special access requirements.

 

Questions?

If you have any questions about the registration process, please contact conferenceadministration.service@durham.ac.uk. 

If you have any questions about the conference itself or the overnight accommodation, please contact us (the ICMI) at icmi@durham.ac.uk.