Salma Ghulman

Salma is a collaborative Graphic Designer, Creative Director and Educator. She has been working in the field since 2012, delivering digital and print materials for various client campaigns, such as designing identities, books and publications, and visual content for social media.

Salma is a designer with an aptitude for experimental projects that leverages excellent communication, interpersonal and client management skills to produce outstanding deliverables.

As an educator, she worked in the States, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom, providing her with three countries' worth of experience to validate her real-world teaching expertise.

Currently, Salma is a PhD researcher at Loughborough University in the UK. Her research focuses on Nation Branding and promoting tourism through Social Media in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

This research aims to focus on the connection between branding and tourism. Specifically, how branding and new media could enhance tourism in Saudi Arabia (SA). Saudi Arabia has changed a lot in the past 10 years. There is a huge social, technological transformation within the country. This is highlighted through the establishment of the ministry of tourism in Saudi Arabia. Tourism is a significant part of a world economy, and it also brings the world together in terms of better understanding of different cultures.

This work will contribute to helping people to understand others who are different to them; facilitate compromise, and generate an enhanced toolbox of design methods and underpinning theory for practicing designers. The work will also help Saudi Arabia develop a rationale for the influence branding has on cultural patterns and trends, making it easier for organizations to make more strategic decisions. The research draws on cultural evolution theories to demonstrate the dynamism of culture as a result of social learning, which helps create the conceptual framework for how branding can influence tourism.

Supervisors: Dr George Torrens and Simon Downs.