Hi all, my name is Dr Dara Conduit. I’m one of Kylie’s colleagues involved in running this campaign and co-running this account. You can usually find me Tweeting over at @daraconduit. #KylieIsUs 1/
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be periodically handing this account over to colleagues and students of Kylie’s, who will share with you why they miss her so much, and why they’re supporting this campaign. I’ve drawn the short straw so I’m up first! 2/
I first met Kylie in 2016 when we were finishing our PhDs. We graduated (from different universities) within a month or two of one another the following year, and are both early career researchers working on the political science of the Middle East, based in Melbourne. 3/
We have a lot in common – we’re both females in a very male-dominated field, which is as unglamorous as it sounds. We’re both annoyingly detail-oriented and committed to doing our absolute best (which our critics might deride as perfectionism!) 4/
And we’re both passionate about our work and making sure that our research has a real-world application. Neither of us are ivory tower academics. 5/
I first saw Kylie in action when she presented her work at a conference I was running, and I was blown away by how clever she was. She was easily the most talented person in our graduating cohort, and has such a bright future ahead of her. 6/
She later contributed a fantastic chapter to a book I co-edited. You can read a preview of her chapter on Bahrain’s Al-Wefaq Society here: palgrave.com/gp/book/978981… She hasn’t seen the hard copy yet because it was released a couple of months after she was imprisoned. 7/
As a person, Kylie is also kind, reserved and down to earth, and cares so deeply for the communities she researches. She is no maverick – it was such a shock to find out that she’d been arrested because she was so careful. 8/
She never took risks, which is one of the things that is so upsetting about this. It’s all so arbitrary. She did nothing wrong. 9/
The stress of the situation has taken an enormous toll on so many of her friends and colleagues. We’ve well and truly kept the counselling industry in business over the past two years. And our pain is nothing in comparison to what Kylie and her family are going through. 10/
The scary thing is that what happened to Kylie could happen to any of us, whether we’re academic researchers or holidaymakers. She poses no threat to Iran. She’s a victim of hostage diplomacy, a policy that Iran has enacted since the 1979 revolution. 11/
Since 2016, Iran has taken at least 13 foreign and dual national academics and students hostage in order to extract concessions from their home governments.
The question for us now is, how can we mobilise pressure on the Australian government to do more to bring Kylie home? 12/
The question for us now is, how can we mobilise pressure on the Australian government to do more to bring Kylie home? 12/
Kylie’s case is a question not only of academic freedom and human rights, but also of the wellbeing of a young colleague of ours who had only finished her PhD 10 months before her arrest. 13/
She’s one of us. We are all Kylie Moore-Gilbert. And she needs our help: please write to your MPs, sign our petitions and make sure everyone you speak to knows who Kylie is. 14/
Every Australian needs to know her story, and why it’s so important to bring her home now. Find out more, and how to help here: freekylie.net 15/15 #KylieIsUs
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