Alex has an undergraduate degree in Arabic and Turkish. She followed this with an MA in (Theoretical) Linguistics at University College London (UCL) and a PhD in Linguistics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) where she focused on Arabic phonology and phonetics.

She's also a CELTA-qualified English language teacher and spent a few years teaching English as a Foreign Language. At the time these videos were made in early 2008 Alex was lecturing part-time in the Linguistics Department at SOAS and was working as a Pronunciation Linguist in the BBC's Pronunciation Unit.