Dr Ala'a Shehabi is a Bahraini writer, researcher and pro-democracy activist, and currently a fellow for the Arab Council of Social Sciences.  She is one of the founders of Bahrain Watch, an ngo working on transparency and accountability. She has a PhD in Economics from Imperial College London, and previously worked as a policy analyst at RAND Europe, and as a lecturer in economics at the Bahrain Institute for Banking & Finance. You can follow her on twitter @alaashehabi