Kevin Macnish

Dr Kevin Macnish is an academic and consultant in AI governance, working with clients in the private and public sectors. A former analyst and manager at GCHQ and the US DOD, Kevin published his first paper on AI governance in 2012. He gained his PhD in digital ethics from the University of Leeds in 2013 before working at the universities of Leeds and Twente. He has been interviewed widely, including on BBC national television and radio and has spoken at both the House of Commons and the House of Lords in relation to digital ethics. In 2018 Kevin published The Ethics of Surveillance: an introduction (Routledge), with a second edition published in 2025; in 2020, Big Data and Democracy (Edinburgh University Press); and in 2023, The Ethics of Surveillance in Times of Emergency (Oxford University Press). He is currently working on an edited collection on AI and Democracy. Kevin has published more than 50 academic articles and chapters on the ethics of AI, privacy, and cybersecurity, and is a frequent speaker at international trade and academic conferences.