Dr. Stella Kladou is an Assistant Professor at the Hellenic Mediterranean University (HMU) in Crete, Greece. She has served as an Assistant Professor at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey and a Senior Lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. Before pursuing a PostDoc at HMU, she realized her PhD in cooperation with the Hellenic Open University (Greece), Istanbul Bilgi University (Turkey) and the University of Rome La Sapienza (Italy), which was partially funded by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey. She has published in prominent academic journals, and co-edited books. She has participated and/or led several international and national projects. She is an International Place Brand Specialist for the Place Brand Observer, in the scientific board of international conferences and in the editorial boards of the Journal of Destination Marketing and Management, the Journal of Qualitative Research in Tourism and the Journal of Foodservice Business Research. Currently Stella serves as an Adjunct Faculty Member (Hellenic Open University), and a Visiting Fellow at the Center of Excellence in Food, Tourism and Sports at the American College in Greece. Her research mainly pertains to place branding, cultural and wine tourism, and digital marketing.