Starting with his PhD at Cambridge University, continuing with postdoctoral work at Oxford University, Richard Blakemore has been writing and teaching about historical piracy and maritime empire for over a decade. He is an expert on the history of piracy including familiar figures like Drake, Morgan, Blackbeard, Bonny and Read, Henry Every, and Captain Kidd, and also how piracy steered history as well as the debates about piracy in contemporary law and popular media.