Mark Elliot has worked at the University of Manchester since 1996, where he currently holds a chair in data science. His research is focused on the topics of data privacy and anonymisation. He founded the international recognised Confidentiality and Privacy Research Group (CAPRI) in 2002, and has run numerous research projects within the CAPRI remit. He leads the UK Anonymisation Network and is one of the key international researchers in the field of Statistical Disclosure and has an extensive portfolio of research grants and publications in the field.

Professor Elliot has extensive experience in collaboration with non-academic partners, particularly with national statistical agencies (e.g. Office for National Statistics, US Bureau of the Census, Australian Bureau of Statistics, Statistics Singapore) where he has been a key influence on disclosure control methodology used in censuses and surveys and where the SUDA software, he developed in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science at Manchester, is currently employed.

Aside from Privacy his research interests also include AI and Society and substantive social science topics under the broad heading of Psychological Sociology (including studies of fathering, personal relationships and social and political attitudes).