Matthew Hedges

Matthew Hedges is an academic focusing on authoritarianism and security studies. He has a doctorate from Durham University where he researched the regime security strategy of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While undertaking fieldwork research for his doctorate he was detained and tortured in the UAE, and convicted of espionage on behalf of the British Government but later pardoned and released. His first book, Reinventing the Sheikhdom is an edited version of his PhD for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment.