[4] 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.
In 2017, she obtained a PhD from the University of Melbourne for a thesis entitled Shiʿi Opposition and Authoritarian Transition in Contemporary Bahrain: The Shifting Political Participation of a Marginalised Majority.
[10] The intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arrested Moore-Gilbert in September 2018 at Tehran Airport as she was leaving the country after attending an academic conference.
[14] In a phone call with Reza Khandan, the husband of jailed human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh, Moore-Gilbert said she felt hopeless, isolated, and unable to eat.
"[15] After she was jailed, Moore-Gilbert launched a campaign of resistance, including staging several hunger strikes[16] and even escaping from the prison yard onto the roof of the IRGC interrogation block.
Richard Ratcliffe, husband of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe who was also held in Evin prison, said Moore-Gilbert was being kept in solitary confinement and was being severely abused, which shocked Iranian activists who knew about it.
"[24] During her detainment, the official advice to her family from the Australian Government was to keep a low profile, however in 2022 Moore-Gilbert said that greater media attention on her detention would have helped apply more pressure on both the Iranian regime and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to negotiate her release.
[25] Moore-Gilbert wrote a memoir titled The Uncaged Sky: My 804 Days in an Iranian Prison, published in 2022 by Ultimo Press[26] in Australia and the UK and in 2023 by Urano World[27] in the US.
She has appeared in episodes of ABC Q+A,[33] 7:30, 60 Minutes,[34] SBS Insight[35] and has written articles for The Atlantic,[36] CNN,[37] The Saturday Paper,[38] The Age[39] and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
[42] Moore-Gilbert has been vocal in advocating for other victims of hostage diplomacy and wrongful detention abroad, and has spoken publicly about the cases of fellow detained Australians Robert Pether, Cheng Lei and Sean Turnell.
[46][47] In April 2021, she announced that she was divorcing him after she found out that he had been having an affair,[48] with Kylie Baxter, her colleague and PhD supervisor, and also an intermediary between University of Melbourne and her family during Moore-Gilbert's imprisonment.