Ronan graduated from the National University of Ireland, Galway with a first-class master’s degree in law, and was vice president of the university’s student law society. His main research interests are media law and freedom of expression, and he is a former legal researcher with the Irish national public broadcaster (RTÉ). Ronan completed his doctoral dissertation at Ghent University, Belgium, on freedom of expression and the chilling effect doctrine, under the guidance of Professor Dirk Voorhoof. He has published his work in a number of law reviews, including the Journal of Media Law, European Human Rights Law Review, Hibernian Law Journal, Columbia Journal of European Law, and European Human Rights Cases, and is a regular contributor to the Strasbourg Observers blog. Ronan is spending spring 2014 at Columbia Law School as a research fellow.