Sophia Jones
Sophia Jones is an award-winning investigative journalist & researcher.
Sophia’s work has influenced policy and led to real-world change. She is currently a researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Digital Investigations Lab, where she conducts open-source investigations to document and expose human rights abuses around the world.
Over the past decade, she has worked as a journalist covering conflict, human rights, and security in nearly two dozen countries. Her reporting has taken her inside ISIS tunnels in Iraq, gold mines in Ghana, HIV clinics in Russia, prisons in Afghanistan, refugee camps in Greece, revolutionary protests in Egypt, and beyond.
She has written for The New York Times, TIME, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Politico, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, NPR, Reuters, and Marie Claire Magazine.
Sophia previously served as executive editor at Starling Lab, a research center at Stanford and USC. There, she explored new tools to capture, store, and verify digital records. In December 2022, Rolling Stone Magazine published her groundbreaking year-long investigation into war crimes committed by an infamous Serb death squad, and the lack of accountability that followed. News outlets and journalists around the world reported on the investigation in a dozen languages. Sophia’s reporting was honored with an award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, a “Citation of Excellence” from the Overseas Press Club, a News and Documentary Emmy Award nomination, and a Scripps Howard Award nomination.
She was The Fuller Project’s global editor from 2017 to 2021. There, her reporting from Afghanistan for The New York Times Magazine won an award from the Military Reporters and Editors Association. Her reporting was also shortlisted for the Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism and the South Asian Journalists Association Daniel Pearl Award. Sophia served as HuffPost's Middle East correspondent from 2013-2016.
Sophia is certified in battlefield medical aid and trained to safely and responsibly conduct research and reporting in dynamic environments.
Interviewing Afghan men living in a camp for internally displaced people outside of Herat in 2019. (Photo by Solmaz Daryani)
Mid-interview with a family in Mosul, Iraq, in 2018. (Photo by Andrea DiCenzo)
Reporting on Egypt’s 2014 constitutional referendum from inside a Cairo polling station. (Photo by Tara Todras-Whitehill/NYT)
Selected Work
Rolling Stone Magazine
The war raging in Europe feels familiar. Invaders descend onto foreign soil. Their leaders claim they are there to “liberate” the people. But the uniformed men are looting homes and raping women. They are torturing and executing civilians, whose bodies lay cold in shallow graves. They are committing war crimes, observers say, and there are photographs and testimony to prove it. This has happened before. Thirty years ago, in Bosnia, Belgrade-backed death squads carried out some of the worst violence on European soil since World War II. Even now, many of the killers walk free, some on the same streets as their victims’ families.
A THOUSAND EXPLOSIONS IN MY EARS
Human Rights Watch’s Digital Investigations Lab
An investigation into a Russian attack that killed dozens of civilians in an Izium residential building.
CLIMATE CHANGES COMPLICATES AFGHAN PROSPECTS FOR PEACE
National Geographic
Experts say warming will further fuel natural disasters, mass displacement, child marriage, and conflict.
IN AFGHANISTAN, WHERE BREAST CANCER IS A DEATH SENTENCE, WOMEN FIGHT TO SAVE LIVES
ELLE
There is no radiation or readily available chemotherapy for women who have breast cancer in Afghanistan.
WEDDED TO ISIS
Marie Claire Magazine
Now that the Islamic State has lost its grip on Iraq, what will become of the women being punished for their husbands’ crimes?
A THOUSAND MILES IN THEIR SHOES
HuffPost
Follow these Syrian refugees as they risk everything for a new life in Europe.
THE MANY DANGERS OF BEING AN AFGHAN WOMAN IN UNIFORM
The New York Times Magazine
Inside the expensive & controversial US-led NATO mission to recruit, support, and protect Afghan women in uniform.
A PANDEMIC AND A SPARK OF LIFE
The Atlantic
I’ve reported from war zones, but nothing prepared me for navigating the joys and fears of early pregnancy under lockdown in Barcelona.
HOW SOCIAL CONSERVATISM FUELED RUSSIA’S HIV EPIDEMIC
POLITICO
Putin turned to the church to help consolidate his rule. The Church cracked down on sensible approaches to STDs. Now, Russia has a crisis.
SIERRA Magazine
In Ghana’s breadbasket, women battle a Colorado mining giant for land and livelihood.
Foreign Affairs
Under the increasingly authoritarian rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the government is squashing dissent and pushing policies that are detrimental to women.
Marie Claire
A global investigation: No procedure exists that can prove virginity, yet unscientific virginity tests occur regularly—even in the U.S.
ISOLATED IN RURAL NIGERIA — AND WAITING ON AMERICA TO VOTE
Foreign Policy
Across much of the world—including one remote Nigerian village—the availability of family planning will largely depend on the outcome of the U.S. presidential election.
TIME
After a devastating attack on a Kabul maternity ward, health advocates struggle to support women when health efforts are under threat by both militants and a deadly, invisible virus.
WHEN RUSSIAN TROLLS ATTACK
WIRED
Russian women are fighting back against fighting back against Russia’s Kremlin-influenced trolling machine.
IN IRAQ, DEATH COMES FOR A TECHNICIAN DEFUSING BOMBS BY HAND
HuffPost
America's allies don't have proper demining equipment or protective gear. That's costing them their lives.
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Exploring Barcelona