Envisioning and Exploring Recovery from Moral Injury

An interdisciplinary conference taking place in person in Durham, UK, on 7-9 April 2025

Call for Papers

Researchers and clinicians in the past decade have proposed several helpful ways of dealing with moral injury at an individual level, and these interventions are certainly critical in preventing negative mental health outcomes. However, as they will often suggest, these interventions are the beginning of recovery from moral injury, not a cure. In fact, Jonathan Shay held that the most pernicious aspect of moral injury was the destruction of social trust, which he defined as “the expectation that power will be used in accordance with ‘what’s right”[1]. The betrayal of this concept, he would later argue, whether by authorities or oneself, can result in a profound sense of alienation between the morally injured person and their governments, nations, communities and friends and relatives in whom they would otherwise place moral trust. If the loss of social trust is at the heart of the corrosive character of moral injury, then recovery from it will have social dimensions.

Yet there is little research that engages the restoration of social trust after moral injury or grapples with the complex ways in which our individual moral actions relate to our moral communities. As a team of Dutch researchers recently noted, moral injury has the capacity to expose the complexities of moral discourse in communal contexts that may “engender discomfort”[2]. They note further, however, that this discomfort should not be ignored, but rather that “this discomfort indicates that spiritual/existential, organisational, societal and political dimensions may be relevant to [morally injured people's] suffering, and that the concept of moral injury has the potential of illuminating this relevance.”

This conference seeks to highlight research and facilitate conversations on ways of envisioning social recovery from moral injury in a wide variety of cultural and vocational contexts. The Call for Papers deadline has now passed and we received a wonderful collection of proposals from a variety of academic disciplines and from people in various sectors with practical experiences of care for those with moral injury. Responses will be sent out shortly and the programme will be available in early 2025. 

Venue and programme

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 7 April to 1.15pm on Wednesday 9 April 2025.

Registration

Registration will open in early 2025. The standard registration fee will be £260 (GBP); students will be eligible to register for the subsidised registration fee of £190. This registration fee includes refreshments, dinner on 7 April, and lunch and dinner on 8 April.

In addition, we have received confirmation that some overnight accommodation at the conference venue, St Chad's College, will be available to book as part of the registration process. Single en-suite rooms including breakfast are £74.40 (GBP) per night. They will be available for the nights of 7 and 8 April on a first-come-first-served basis. Please note that there is no parking at St Chad's College and city centre parking costs in the region of £11 per 24 hours; therefore if you are travelling by car you might wish to consider using alternative overnight accommodation. 

To ensure you are notified when conference registration opens, please ensure you are on our mailing list.

Questions?

If you have any questions about the conference please do not hesitate to contact us at icmi@durham.ac.uk.

[1] Jonathan Shay, Odysseus In America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming (New York:  Scribner, 2002), 151.

[2] Tine Molendijk, Willemijn Verkoren, Annelieke Drogendijk, Martin Elands, Eric-Hans Kramer, Annika Smit & Désirée Verweij (2022) Contextual dimensions of moral injury: An interdisciplinary review, Military Psychology, 34:6, 742-753, DOI:10.1080/08995605.2022.2035643.