Mhairi Aitken

Dr Mhairi Aitken is a Senior Research Associate in Newcastle University Business School. She is a Sociologist whose research examines social and ethical dimensions of digital innovation particularly relating to uses of data and AI. Her research has focused on these topics in relation to health and finance.

Mhairi works on the EPSRC funded FinTrust project which explores the role of machine learning in banking, particularly in the context of automated lending decisions and whether these lead to bias and financial exclusion: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/latest/2018/11/fintrust/

Prior to joining Newcastle University, Mhairi worked as a Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh where she undertook a programme of research and public engagement to explore social and ethical dimensions of data-intensive health research. She held roles as a Public Engagement Research Fellow in both the Farr Institute of Health Informatics Research and the Scottish Health Informatics Programme (SHIP). Her work in this area has been influential in informing research and governance practices and shaping emerging good practice around public engagement with data-intensive health research.