Dr. Shaw has undertaken a lot of research on moral injury, which is the damage done to one’s conscience or moral compass when that person perpetrates, witnesses, or fails to prevent acts that transgress one’s own moral beliefs, values, or ethical codes of conduct.

Most research to understand moral injury has been with military Service Members and Veterans, as the nature of war and combat create situations where people may have experiences that contradict the values they live by in civilian life.

Examples of potentially morally injurious events in the context of war include killing or harming others, when officers have to make decisions that affect the survival of others, and when medics are not able to care for all who were harmed in a conflict.

The mission of the Great Philosophical Problems thinktank is to provide a unifying definition, and accompanying phenomenology, for the construct of Moral Injury to address suicide in veteran and wider civilian populations. Like the social lexicons provided by PTSD, they set out to provide the moral grammar for the “Signature Wound” of contemporary war.

Dr. Shaw is currently working with the head ethicist at The US Army War College, Dr. Timothy Mallard, on a submission for the Australian Royal Commission Into Defence and Veteran Suicide to launch the international definition of Moral Injury.

Dr. Shaw has a Ph.D. in Moral Injury and a Research Master's investigating the implications of Just War Theory. He has taught ethics at the University of Sydney and is also a leading voice in the critique of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas and the Just War Tradition.

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