Kylie Moore-Gilbert

Kylie Moore-Gilbert
Born
Gosford, New South Wales, Australia
Citizenship
  • Australian
  • British
OccupationAcademic
Known forAuthor
TitleThe Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison
RelativesBart Moore-Gilbert (uncle)
Academic background
EducationPhD
Alma mater
ThesisShiʿi opposition and authoritarian transition in contemporary Bahrain: the shifting political participation of a marginalised majority (2017)
Academic work
DisciplinePolitical Scientist

Kylie Moore-Gilbert is an Australian-British academic in Middle Eastern political science. She was employed as a lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Asia Institute and has carried out research into contemporary political developments in the Middle East. The subject of her PhD research was post-Arab Spring Bahrain.

Moore-Gilbert was invited to a conference in Iran in 2018. She was detained when she was at the airport preparing to leave the country. From September 2018 to November 2020, she was imprisoned on charges of espionage. She denied the charges, and no evidence for them was ever made public. The Australian government rejected the charges as "baseless and politically motivated".

Moore-Gilbert was released by Iran in a prisoner swap on 25 November 2020, in exchange for three Iranian convicted terrorists in Thailand, who had been sentenced in connection with the 2012 Bangkok bomb plot.