I am a philosopher specialized in the field of emotions and negative affect with a particular focus on the implications for majority-minority relations. I am currently a research associate at the University of Virginia, working remotely in The Moral Injury Lab,  and a teaching associate professor in Minority Studies, University of Copenhagen. 

Across a range of different domains and social contexts, I have explored a series of related research questions to interrogate the social, moral, and political significance of aversive gut feelings like disgust and discomfort.  My work on these questions proceeds from the perspective of practical philosophy, infused with the latest developments in the affective and social sciences. It presents an applied form of emotion theory that is rooted in and substantiates its normative and conceptual claims with empirical evidence

From my previous focus on of disgust, I  am now looking into the emotional dimensions of moral injury, the relationship between (implicit) biases, aversive affect (discomfort, stress, anxieties), and the physiological and biological detrimental effects of discrimination. 

I did my PhD in philosophy and minority studies at University of Copenhagen. Since then I have been a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for the Experimental-Philosophical Study of Discrimination (CEPDISC), Aarhus University and a Carlsberg postdoctoral fellow at the Section for Philosophy and Science Studies, Roskilde University with the project "Unconscious bias: Don't Trust Your Gut Feeling".  During these years, I have also been a visiting fellow at the philosophy departments at University of Sheffield, MIT and University of Chicago. 

My book Perpetrator Disgust: The Moral Limits of Gut Feelings is out with Oxford University Press. Here's a link to the book's introduction.

· The first in-depth philosophical analysis of perpetrator disgust: when soldiers experience severe physiological or emotional distress in the course of committing atrocities or years later, when recalling their crimes

·      Analyzes historical case studies in light of latest scholarship from the philosophical and scientific study of emotions

· Argues for the need to study emotions in their social and political context

· Opens up new avenues of inquiry in the field of moral psychology

·  Challenges moralized conceptions of empathy, disgust, and distress

Read a brief overview of the book's argument on the "Imperfect Cognitions"-bog

Watch my conversation with David Livingstone Smith on the book 

Filmskaberne bag den nu anmelderhyldede, tv-premiereaktuelle dokumentarfilm ’Undertrykkelsens sang’ om en pædofil tysk kult i Chile har stillet sig selv den umulige opgave at skildre virkelighedens grusomheder uden at forfalde til morbid fascination. Ph.d. i filosofi med speciale i minoritets- og folkedrabsstudier, Ditte Marie Munch-Jurisic, har set filmen, Dagbladet Information, September 2020

A condensed version of  the argument in my journal article "The Right to Feel Comfortable, Implicit bias and the Moral Potential of Discomfort",  Ethical Theory and Moral Practice