Ian McGonigle was born in 1984 in the town of Drogheda in the Republic of Ireland. His father was an electrician and his mother ran a pre-school. He grew up in the small town of Skerries in North County Dublin where he spent his youth racing sailboats. He was educated at Skerries Community College and at Trinity College Dublin, where he studied the sciences. Upon graduation, he went up to King’s College Cambridge for a PhD in biochemistry where he became distracted by anthropology, leading him to a masters in anthropology at the University of Chicago, and a second PhD, in anthropology and Middle Eastern studies, at Harvard University. His dissertation, ‘Genomic Citizenship,’ was awarded the Association for Middle East Anthropology dissertation award and became a book published with MIT Press. In 2018, he took up a Nanyang Assistant Professorship at NTU in Singapore with a grant to launch a ‘Science and Society’ research group. His first documentary film, Redemption: Wine and Prophecy in the Land of Israel, won several awards at international and independent film festivals.