Research groups
David Lyreskog
PhD
Senior Researcher in Neuroethics
About me
I am a Senior Researcher with the Neuroscience, Ethics & Society (NEUROSEC) team in the Department of Psychiatry, and my current key roles include:
- Director of the Oxford Winter Neuroethics School – a world-first, hands-on educational initiative to up-skill researchers and professionals in how to do Neuroethics;
- Deputy Director of the Design Bioethics Laboratory, with the Neuroscience, Ethics & Society (NEUROSEC) team at the Department of Psychiatry, University of Oxford, and the Wellcome Discovery Platform 'ANTITHESES';
- Co-Investigator on the Horizon Europe project 'AI-PROGNOSIS' – an international and multidisciplinary effort to develop an ethical ecosystem for diagnosis, prognosis, and disease management in Parkinson's Disease using Big Data and AI;
- Lead Researcher on the Oxford Ethics + Humanities research line 'Rethinking Collective Minds', investigating conceptual and ethical impacts of emerging technologies for collective thinking and decision-making.
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My background being in the field of analytic philosophy, I have a MA in Philosophy from Umeå University, Sweden. My Magistrate (1 year MA) thesis explored the landscape of moral enhancement as a means for criminal rehabilitation (2013), and my Masters (2 year MA) thesis discussed ethical issues in decision-making processes leading up to deep brain stimulation (DBS) in paediatric populations (2014).
My PhD thesis, The Ethics of Mind Maintenance (Summa cum laude, 2020), analysed ethical trade-offs in the context of emerging technologies aimed at preventing and treating age-related neural decline and disease. The project sought to facilitate our understanding of the value trade-offs involved in utilising technologies for neurodegenerative diseases, the aim being to provide a guiding and ethically sound decision-making structure for patients and other users of the technologies.
Between 2019 and 2021 I worked on the Wellcome-funded project BeGOOD Early Intervention Ethics in Child and Adolescent Mental Health, developing novel tools for bioethics research and engagement with young people. In this project, we built a digital game – 'Tracing Tomorrow' – to study the values and preferences of young people in the context of digital phenotyping for mental health in schools.
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While I am broadly interested in impactful research and innovation in the intersection of neuroscience, psychiatry, and technology, specific domains of interests include ethical analysis, decision-making, and innovation in:
* New and emerging neurotechnologies;
* Mental health in child and adolescent populations;
* Exercise, sports, and health;
* Diagnosis, prevention, and treatment strategies for neurodegenerative disease;
* Frailty and multimorbidity;
* Artificial, Hybrid, and Collective Intelligence.
For enquiries regarding DPhil/PhD supervision, consultancy, or advisory work in the aforementioned areas, please reach out via email.
Recent publications
When the Lights Go Out: The Challenge of Neuroabandonment
Journal article
LYRESKOG D. et al, (2026), AJOB Neuroscience
Ethics and regulation of human brain organoid research: recommendations from the Asia Pacific Neuroethics Working Group
Journal article
LYRESKOG D. and SAVULESCU J., (2025), Asian Bioethics Review
Clinical AI is not (yet) trustworthy-but it could be (Preprint)
Journal article
Saada A. et al, (2025), Journal of Medical Internet Research
Stakeholder Perspectives on Trustworthy AI for Parkinson Disease Management Using a Cocreation Approach: Qualitative Exploratory Study.
Journal article
Alves B. et al, (2025), J Med Internet Res, 27
Ethical Challenges to Green Social Prescribing in the UK Mental Health System
Preprint
Menon S. et al, (2025)
