Sophia Jones is an award-winning investigative journalist and open source researcher.

She combines innovative digital forensics with experience reporting in over 20 countries to unearth systemic abuses and hold the world’s most powerful institutions to account.

Sophia is a researcher with Human Rights Watch’s Digital Investigations Lab. She utilizes open source research, geospatial analysis, data analysis, spatio-temporal research, and field research to document and expose war crimes and human rights abuses. Her work has influenced policy and led to real-world change.

Prior to joining HRW, she worked as a journalist for a decade covering conflict, human rights, and security across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Europe, and Africa. 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, and revolutionary protests in Egypt.

Her investigations and reporting have been published in The New York Times, TIME, National Geographic, Rolling Stone, Politico, Foreign Policy, The Atlantic, NPR, Reuters, and Marie Claire.

Sophia served as executive editor at Starling Lab, a research center at Stanford and USC, from 2021-2022, where she helped pioneer and test cryptographic provenance protocols to capture, store, and verify digital records. While there, she led and authored a groundbreaking year-long Rolling Stone investigation that exposed a Serbian DJ and former member of a Serbian death squad involved in a Bosnian War massacre. News outlets around the world reported on the investigation in a dozen languages. The reporting won awards and honors, including 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.

As global editor at The Fuller Project (2017-2021), her deep-dive reporting from Afghanistan for The New York Times Magazine won an award from the Military Reporters & Editors Association. Her reporting was shortlisted for the Biedler Prize for Cancer Journalism and the South Asian Journalists Association’s Daniel Pearl Award. Sophia served as HuffPost's Middle East correspondent (2013-2016).

As an expert in open source research and investigative reporting, Sophia regularly speaks on panels and leads trainings. She is experienced reporting in dynamic environments, trained to investigate deaths and war crimes, and excels at translating data into powerfully human investigative features.

Selected Work

ALL MY DREAMS HAVE BEEN ERASED

Human Rights Watch

An investigation into Israel’s forced displacement of some 32,000 Palestinian men, women and children from the three West Bank refugee camps

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.

BENEATH THE RUBBLE

Human Rights Watch’s Digital Investigations Lab

Documenting devastation and loss in Mariupol: A Human Rights Watch and SITU Research and Truth Hounds Investigation

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.

FOOL’S GOLD

SIERRA Magazine

In Ghana’s breadbasket, women battle a Colorado mining giant for land and livelihood.

WOMEN ARE DYING IN TURKEY

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.

THE DJ AND THE WAR CRIMES

Rolling Stone Magazine

Thirty years after a death squad massacred civilians in Bosnia, none of the infamous Arkan's Tigers have stood trial for their alleged part in those crimes. And for the past few decades, one of them has been spinning trance records at European festivals and clubs

A TEST WITH NO ANSWER

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.

THEY CAME TO KILL THE MOTHERS

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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