Albena Todorova is currently at the New Bulgarian University in Sofia where an innovative semiotics offer includes courses on advertising & consumer culture. In 2009 she wrote a dissertation on Edgar Allan Poe in popular culture. Albena is now doing PhD research on Poe mythology & symbolism globally from Baudelaire through to Japanese mystery writer Edogawa Rampo, 60s horror movies, Lou Reed, Antony Hegarty, contemporary emo, manga & gaming subcultures and online interest groups.
Sofia, Bulgaria
Alison Bancroft was born in Newcastle upon Tyne and has lived in London and Paris. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen Mary, University of London, and has taught at the University of London, the University of the Arts, and the Sorbonne. She transitioned out of academic life in 2011 and is now a culture analyst, strategist and forecaster. Her work is multidisciplinary and covers fashion, beauty, lifestyle and design, and she is also a specialist in gender and culture. She writes for various consumer and business websites and speaks regularly at public lectures and commercial presentations and briefings. Her first book, Fashion and Psychoanalysis, was published in 2012.
London, UK
Brian McIntyre is the owner of Orchard Brand Agency, a planning and insight agency based in Dublin. With a long-held interest in semiotics arising his period as a director of Added Value in London, he is an expert practitioner in consumer and cultural insight, brand positioning and applied innovation. Brian is an avid musician having spent several seasons as a semi-professional opera singer and a passionate writer. His Orchard Blog - 140+ essays at the intersection of marketing and life - insightfully anticipated the triumph of Trump, Macron, Netflix, and holds firm in its prediction that the new shape of Toblerone cannot last.
Dublin,