Aidan McGarry

Dr Aidan McGarry’s research focuses on political representation and participation of minority and marginalised communities, particularly Roma across Central and Eastern Europe but also LGBTIQ communities. He has taught courses on nationalism, international relations theory and social movements. He has written four books: Who Speaks for Roma? (Continuum 2010); The Politics and Discourses of Migration in Europe (co-editor, Palgrave 2013); and The Identity Dilemma: Social Movements and Collective Identity (co-editor with James Jasper, Temple University Press 2015), and Romaphobia: The Last Acceptable Racism (Zed 2017) which explores the causes of anti-Roma prejudice in Europe. Aidan completed all his formal higher education at Queen’s University, Belfast with a BA (Hons) in European Area Studies, an MA in European and Global Governance and a PhD in Politics and International Studies. After gaining his PhD in 2007 he worked as a researcher on a project at Ulster University for one year before taking up a Lectureship in Politics at the University of Brighton where he remained for almost 10 years, having been promoted to Reader in Politics in 2017. In 2014, he was given a ‘Rising Star’ award. Aidan has been a visiting scholar at Columbia University, New York, the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence and the European Centre for Minority Issues in Germany. Aidan was awarded a EURIAS Fellowship at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Amsterdam where he will work from September 2018-July 2019. Aidan was Principal Investigator of an AHRC (Arts and Humanities Research Council) funded project ‘Aesthetics of Protest: Visual Culture and Communication in Turkey’ from 2016-2018 working with colleagues at Glasgow Caledonia University, University of Brighton and Bilgi University, Istanbul. He is currently working on an edited volume on protest, art and social media with colleagues. He is supervising a Newton International Fellow, Ozge Ozduzen, whose work focuses on social movements in Turkey. He has advised local government in the UK, NGOs and charities in central and eastern Europe and international organisations regarding minority representation and participation. His future research project will be a book focusing on political voice of marginalised communities building on research on the Gezi Park protests in Turkey, his LGBTIQ research and his ongoing research with/on Roma communities across Europe. Aidan is also supervising Dr. Lucie Fremlova, on her CEU Budapest Post Doctoral Fellowship on LGBTIQ Roma.