jats:p Seismic liquefaction of loosely packed, saturated soils poses a significant threat to the built environment. Recently, air injection into liquefiable soil deposits has been introduced as an innovative and cost-effective liquefaction mitigation technique. However, few effective guidelines are available to the engineers for its application and performance. The way that air should be injected appropriately, most particularly, in the presence of structures, is not clearly defined. The distribution of retained air bubbles within the saturated soil medium and its effect on the seismic response also need further investigation. In an effort to offer insights into this problem, an experimental programme consisting of a series of centrifuge and 1g shaking table tests was undertaken. The results have shown that the use of higher air injection pressure provides a much wider and a more uniform air-entrapped zone, but increases the risk of soil deformations developed under the foundations. The distance from the air injector and preferential flow pathways influence the distribution of the retained air bubbles and seismic response of the soil models. Moreover, it was shown in a novel way that the air injection technique is not very effective at low confining stresses to reduce liquefaction-induced deformations beneath shallow foundations. </jats:p>