Linsey McGoey (born 17 April 1978) is a Canadian sociologist and academic based in England. She is a professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. She is known for having written about philanthropy in her book No Such Thing as a Free Gift and co-editing the Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies with Matthias Gross. Her next book, The Unknowers: How Elite Ignorance Rules the World, was published in 2019.
She was educated at Carleton University, graduating with a BA in Journalism. She then completed an MA at the London School of Economics in Anthropology.
She received a PhD from the London School of Economics in 2007 with a thesis on The value of ignorance: Antidepressant drugs and the policies of objectivity in medicine.