Habiba Allarakia has worked since the early 1990s in business and marketing research across diverse markets and categories, with 6 years in Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe and the Middle East and over a decade in the Arabian Peninsula. Habiba was the first woman to work at Procter & Gamble Saudi Arabia, where she set up the now flourishing women’s office. Her key areas of expertise are strategy & initiative development, building brands & portfolios, consumer insight and market understanding. Habiba loves reading, the sea, travelling and discovery.
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Author, critic, on the faculty of Tourism & Women's Studies at the Welsh campus of the Ecole des Hautes Etudes in Benllech, Anglesey. One of Opal's main areas of research is cross-dressing and subjectivity in Welsh political activism, with special reference to the Rebecca Riots of the 1830s and 1840s. She is also a postmodern cake designer creating fantastic icing sculptures with alcoves wherein may be displayed actual cake. Much acclaimed & decorated internationally, with awards for her work at the interface of patisserie, cultural insight & cyborg theory.
Benllech, Anglesey, UK
Freelance researcher and writer who publishes mainly on creative and visual culture. PhD in Art & Design from Nottingham Trent University 2008. Lectures at local universities & colleges in Nottingham and has worked as exhibitions co-ordinator at QUAD Visual Arts and Media Centre, Derby. Current work explores the possibilities of creative ecologies that emphasize a 'materialist semiotic' of non-linguistic entities - materials, objects, behaviours - informed by the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and Manuel De Landa.
Nottingham, UK