John MacKenzie is Professor Emeritus of Imperial History at Lancaster University. He also holds honorary professorship of the Universities of Aberdeen, St. Andrews, Stirling and Edinburgh and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

He has published extensively in the field of British imperial history: among his books are Propaganda and Empire (1984), The Empire of Nature (1988), Orientalism: History, Theory and the Arts (1995), Empires of Nature and the Nature of Empires (1997), The Scots in South Africa (2007) and Museums and Empire (2009).

He has edited a number of books, including catalogues for the National Portrait Gallery (David Livingstone and the Victorian Encounter with Africa, 1996) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (The Victorian Vision, 2001), and most recently Peoples, Nations and Cultures (2005). He is currently working on two edited works, European Empires and the People (2010) and Scotland and the British Empire (2011).

He continues to travel extensively around the world, both for research and for pleasure, and has maintained his interest in railway stations and the societies they serve. He now lives in retirement in Perthshire, cultivating a large garden.