Garry Hornby was born in Rochdale, England, studied at Leeds University and then emigrated to New Zealand in 1971. He worked as a mainstream and special class teacher in Auckland. He then trained and worked as an educational psychologist until 1986, when he returned to England to work at the Universities of Manchester and Hull, with two years at the University of the West Indies in Barbados, before moving back to New Zealand to become a Professor of Education at the University of Canterbury in 2002. He is a chartered educational and counselling psychologist, and a Fellow of the British Psychological Society. He is author of Improving Parental Involvement (Cassell, 2000) and Counselling in Child Disability (Chapman and Hall, 1994), co-author of Meeting Special Needs in Mainstream Schools, (David Fulton); Counselling Pupils in Schools (Routledge, 2003) and Mental Health Handbook for Schools (Routledge, 2002) which gained the TES/NASEN book award for most informative academic book in 2002. His teaching and research span the areas of educational psychology, inclusive and special education, counselling, teacher education, and parental involvement in education. He is married to a Barbadian and has two teenage sons.