Martin Gainsborough is a recognised international expert on Vietnam and its politics. He is a Reader in Development Politics in the Department of Politics at the University of Bristol. He is also director of the Bristol-Mekong Project, and consults widely on aspects of Vietnam's politics and business, notably for the United Nations Development Programme, the UK's Department for International Development, and the World Bank. He teaches on development studies, Vietnamese and Asian politics, and state theory. He is author of Changing Political Economy of Vietnam: The Case of Ho Chi Minh City (2003) and editor of On the Borders of State Power: Frontiers in the Greater Mekong Sub-Region (2009).