A warm welcome to Arwa Bokhari, who joins us this month to begin her PhD studies, supervised by Prof Dave Cliff and Dr John Cartlidge. Arwa graduated first in her class with a Masters in Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and she has held a position as a lecturer at Taif University in Taif, Saudi Arabia, since 2019. Funded by a Saudi Government Scholarship provided by the Saudi Arabian Cultural Bureau (SACB), Arwa’s PhD research will use agent-based simulation and modelling to explore opinion dynamics in financial markets.