Mackenzie Graham

Mackenzie Graham is a Senior Research Fellow at the Ethox Centre and Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities. He is currently part of the National Consortium of Intelligent Medical Imaging (NCIMI), investigating ethical issues arising from the collection, storage, and sharing of digitalized medical images.

This project aims to facilitate the ethical integration of clinical imaging enhanced by artificial intelligence (AI), into medical practice. Mackenzie received a PhD in Philosophy from Western University, Canada, in 2016, where he specialised in moral philosophy and bioethics. 

Mackenzie’s research focuses on ethical questions arising from the application of medical imaging —particularly functional neuroimaging after severe brain injury— in clinical research and practice. As part of his involvement with NCIMI, he is exploring the necessary ethical requirements for well-founded public trust and confidence in the research uses of medical images and other data.

He is also interested in the ethical management of incidental findings arising in neuroimaging research, and is a part of the Northern European Returning Results Network investigating these issues. 

Before coming to Oxford in 2018, Mackenzie spent two years as a research associate at the Brain and Mind Institute at Western University, investigating ethical questions emerging from the discovery of ‘covert awareness’ in patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome (also called the persistent vegetative state).

Mackenzie’s work focussed primarily on issues of well-being in these patients, and challenges associated with communicating research results to patients’ families. Mackenzie continues to collaborate with world-leading neuroscientists, neurologists, epidemiologists, and bioethicists to address these questions.