Bodily Injuries and Moral Injuries
PhD student Kaeleigh Damico is investigating minor moral harms that can accumulate and leave a lasting impact.
As a fifth-year PhD student at UT, Kaeleigh Damico has presented her research twice at the International Society for Military Ethics (ISME). In 2026, she received a Public Service Commendation Medal from the US Department of the Army, recognizing her “groundbreaking research, delivering profound insights on the ethical challenges of irregular warfare,” as well as her contributions to conference discussions.
Damico presented her paper “Moral Papercuts and Irregular Warfare” this year. Her doctoral dissertation studies moral harm, or ways that our moral capacities can be damaged, and introduces the concept of moral papercuts: minor but frequently recurring moral stressors that can accumulate, resulting in nonstandard moral injuries.
“Unlike the moral trauma associated with moral injury, moral papercuts emerge from ordinary experiences,” she explained. “Someone with a moral papercut may be unlikely to report any distress, nor will they have sudden, drastic changes in their moral self. Instead, moral papercuts can be thought of as momentary slipups, glitches if you will, of moral reasoning.
“Individually, they leave little lasting mark on a person’s moral self, but their effects can accumulate, particularly when they occur alongside or in close proximity to more significant moral harms.”
Her dissertation is about how and why people get moral questions wrong. The research arises out of the concept of moral injury, which focuses on the moral damage that severe, sudden trauma can cause, originally in military contexts. “The lives of my family and friends have been impacted by moral injury, so it is a topic close to my heart,” she said. “Further, the more that I learn about moral harm, the more that I am convinced that there is still more to be explored and understood.”
“I have previously written about moral injury as injury to practical reason, arguing that moral injury impacts the ways that we think about and understand our actions in relation to others and ourselves,” Damico said. “While moral injury captures the harms associated with morally traumatic events, many of the moral difficulties that arise in contexts of moral conflict fall short of that threshold.”
“There are similarities between moral injuries and the harm produced by less significant experiences, but they are not identical phenomena,” Damico said.
A recipient of a UT Graduate Fellowship and a Teaching Fellowship, she received the philosophy department’s John Hardwig Teaching Prize in 2024 and was a runner up for the department’s Richard Aquila Essay Prize in 2025. In 2024 her paper “Beautiful Disaster? Ugly Nature and Natural Disasters” won Best Graduate Student Essay in Philosophy at the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the American Society for Aesthetics Annual Conference.
Choosing UT for Graduate School
Damico was introduced to philosophy classes during a high school summer camp. “It was the first time where I was able to study something for its own sake, where getting the wrong answer was okay, and where I was able to really think creatively,” she said.
When it was time to choose a graduate program, being close to her family in Western North Carolina was only one of the considerations.
“It was important to me to be in a program that was truly egalitarian,” she said. “When I interviewed, I asked some of the female professors if they felt as respected as their colleagues. At UT, the answer was an unequivocal ‘Yes.’”
Damico also wanted a graduate philosophy program that wasn’t dogmatic. “At UT, I have been able to study what interests me, and my professors have been happy to support and challenge me, even when my research has not been the same as theirs,” she said.
Two faculty members have been particularly helpful to Damico. “First, Kristina Gehrman has been a constant source of support and feedback in my writing and work,” she said of her dissertation advisor. “Second, Clerk Shaw has been incredibly helpful in navigating academia and the writing process.”
Damico is a consultant to other students through the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center.
She also has served as president of the Philosophy Graduate Student Association, planning its annual conference and developing various opportunities for students. “This gave me the opportunity to collaborate with various campus entities, network with graduate students and professors from across the country, and to better understand the logistics of organizing academic events,” she said.