Aidan Rankin was born in 1966 in Melbourne, Australia, but returned to the UK with his parents in 1972. He spent his childhood in Hampshire and North London (where he served five years imprisonment at boarding school). He has an MA in Modern History from Oxford University and a PhD in Political Science from the London School of Economics. The latter took him to South America, where he was based in Montevideo studying the transition to democracy in Uruguay, with some comparative material from Argentina, Chile and Brazil. He has since worked as press officer for Survival International, the NGO that campaigns for indigenous peoples, lectured and run a research programme at the LSE and worked as News Editor for Jain Spirit.

Aidan has contributed articles and reviews to numerous publications, including The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, The Times, The New Statesman, Spectator, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, New Vision, Insight (Journal of the Theosophical Society) and Next Future (Sri Aurobindo Society). He is the winner of the Literati Award for Excellence for contributions to the European Business Review. Aidan is a trained stress management consultant and is on the National Council of the Theosophical Society.

Aidan became interested in spiritual issues because he realised that the social sciences, political science in particular, only scratched the surface of the human predicament and that a more rounded approach was needed. His most recent book, Healing Wisdom from India, brings the spiritual and political worlds together and transcends traditional boundaries within both.

Aidan lives in Yorkshire, having emigrated from the South. He enjoys walking in the Dales and on the Lancashire coast.