Dr Michael Murray gained his PhD in Planning at Queen's University Belfast. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Colorado State University, USA and is currently a Research Associate at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis at National University of Ireland Maynooth. He is a founder member of the Irish Scottish Forum for Spatial Planning.

Michael was Coordinator at QUB for the Strategic Planning Action Network - an interdisciplinary partnership involving university and practitioner expertise from Belgium, France, Ireland and the UK over the period 2004-2008, and is currently Principal Investigator at QUB for the Irish Social Sciences Platform.

He has published widely in books and journal articles.