[7] Since 2012 she has been a researcher during the summers in the Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University.
Since 2014, Alison Mackey has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge University Press journal, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.
[8] Since 2014, Mackey has been a co-founder of IRIS (the Instruments for Second Language Research digital repository).
[11] Mackey has published a book for a general audience, The Bilingual Edge: Why, when and how to teach a child second language (HarperCollins, with Kendall King).
Mackey's most cited book is "Second language research: methodology and design" (with Susan M. Gass)[12] and her most cited journal article is Conversational Interaction and Second Language Development: Recasts, Responses, and Red Herrings?