David A. McNeill is an Irish journalist and academic, based in Tokyo. He has written for The Independent, The Irish Times and The Economist newspapers, as well as The Chronicle of Higher Education and many other publications. He is an adjunct professor at Sophia University, a long-standing member of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and co-author of Strong in the Rain, an acclaimed account of Japan’s March 11, 2011 disaster. He is a long-term editorial advisor to the e-journal Asia Pacific Journal, Japanfocus.org.
Career
McNeill was born in England and grew up along the border of Ireland and Northern Ireland. He earned a PhD from Napier University in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1998 and was a full-time professor at Liverpool John Moores University from 1995 to 1999. He has subsequently taught part-time at Canton University of Technology in China, and at Takushoku University, Hosei University and the University of Tokyo in Japan. He has been based in Tokyo since 2000 and has written mostly for the British media since then. He is an editor of the electronic journal The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus.