Aidan McGarry studied at Queen’s University, Belfast. His PhD focused on the political representation of Roma communities in Hungary and Romania. He then worked at the University of Brighton (2008-18), teaching politics, before joining Loughborough University through the Excellence 100 scheme. 

He is the author of six books including Romaphobia: The Last Acceptable Form of Racism (Zed, 2017), The Aesthetics of Global Protest: Visual Culture and Communication (Amsterdam University Press, 2019) and his most recent book Political Voice: Protest, Democracy and Marginalized Groups (Oxford University Press, 2024). 

He has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University (New York), Scuola Normale Superiore (Florence) and the European Centre for Minority Issues (Germany). In 2016-18, he led an AHRC-funded international project looking at protest aesthetics, communication and visual culture in Turkey. 

In 2018-19, Aidan held a EURIAS Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (Amsterdam) where he was a Marie Curie Fellow. Then, in 2022-23, he was recipient of a Fulbright All Disciplines Scholar Award based at the University of Southern California in LA.