Between 2015 and 2019 McCargo held a shared professorial appointment at Columbia University, where he remains a visiting scholar at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute.

He attended Sandbach School and later gained three degrees from the University of London: a First in English (Royal Holloway 1986); then an MA in Area Studies (Southeast Asia) (1990) and a PhD in Politics (1993) from SOAS.

His writings regarding the "network monarchy", a term he coined to describe King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his proxies, particularly former Prime Minister Prem Tinsulanond, have been influential among Thai academics.

At the same time, all of McCargo's work on Thailand and Southeast Asia forms part of his larger intellectual project on the nature of power and justice, which has a broad comparative reach.

From 2005 to 2010, McCargo worked primarily on the violent conflict affecting Thailand's southern border provinces, spending a year driving around the region and interviewing more than 270 informants.

Tearing Apart the Land has been widely reviewed; Time magazine wrote, "No armchairs for this author: he researched the book by crisscrossing southern Thailand in a temperamental 1989 Mercedes, hastening back to the town of Pattani by nightfall to avoid militant booby traps.

Reviewing the book in the Journal of Asian Studies (May 1010) Robert W. Hefner wrote, "McCargo has sifted through the details of this tragic conflict with extraordinary diligence and insight.

Jury co-chair Professor Carol Gluck described it as a "vivid on-the-ground account of the Thai insurgency showing how national politics, rather than minority religion, drives the violence that is too often ascribed either to ethnicity or Islam.

His book Contemporary Japan (third edition 2013) is widely assigned even by Japanologists as an introductory student text, and has been translated into Malaysian, Chinese and Korean.

Religion has been a central theme of McCargo's work, dating back to his doctoral research on Chamlong's links with the Santi Asoke Buddhist movement.

His writings on Thai Buddhism, which he claims is an obstacle to, rather than an asset for processes of democratization in the country, have generated controversy, and have been extensively challenged in two books by the leading scholar-monk Prayudh Payutto.

Between 2011 and 2014, McCargo held a Leverhulme Trust major research fellowship to examine issues relating to justice and politics in Thailand, from which he has published a number of articles.

In 2011, McCargo published an influential article with his former PhD student Naruemon Thabchumpon in which they coined the term "urbanized villagers", to describe the socio-economic basis of the pro-Thaksin redshirt movement.

The phenomenon found in Thailand, whereby a traditional elite allied with a metropolitan middle class finds itself threatened and outnumbered by the rise of urbanized villagers, can be seen in many other countries.

Written during a 12-week COVID-19 pandemic lockdown between March and June 2020, the book makes use of digital ethnography methods, including virtual interviews and focus groups, as well as extensive exploration of online sources, especially YouTube.

Future Forward is written in a highly accessible style using personal narratives and anecdotes, but is framed by the authors' deep academic understanding of the country's changing electoral politics.