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Sophia Brown

@sophiastories.bsky.social
246 followers 164 following 27 posts

Writer and academic; mainly thinking about climate change and migration. MSCA Research Fellow at Durham University's Geography dept. I write a newsletter on climate-related loss and damage: lossanddamage.substack.com

PostsRepliesMedia
Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
I wrote about why loss and damage gets so little media coverage - which includes acknowledging the stark tension between the lack of interest in western media and the fact that 80% of developing nations include l&d in their national climate plans. Where do we go from here?
open.substack.com
‘Wishful sinking’
Why is loss and damage so often ignored in the media?
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 10/03/2026
My latest newsletter: I look at Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica and write about how it’s a failure to ask questions about climate change while avoiding the topic of colonialism and the structural inequalities that stem from it. open.substack.com/pub/lossandd...
open.substack.com
Hurricane Melissa: Climate colonialism and the refusal to take responsibility
‘What we call climate change is not merely an environmental phenomenon; it is a historical process...that began with European colonization of Abya Yala/Latin America and globalized through centuries o...
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Here's my latest newsletter - this time on the more intangible, immaterial aspects of loss and damage (which are no less important than those which we can easily 'measure'). I really enjoyed writing this one as I got to focus on stories, which is my comfort zone :)
open.substack.com
‘One thousand ways to experience loss’
Why acknowledging non-economic loss and damage is so important
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India Bourke @indiabourke.bsky.social · 31/12/2025
New Years Resolution 2026: get more into Substack, both reading and writing. Below is one I’m excited to follow, on climate loss and damage, by the beautiful writer @sophiastories.bsky.social. And I’ve already been enjoying Diana Savarin’s, on thoughtful living that galvanises the soul.
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 19/12/2025
Closing out the year with my latest newsletter, this one focused on COP30 and how it's a pretty terrible process (no surprise there). But also a shoutout to civil society orgs doing immense work against the odds - e.g. the just transition mechanism. lossanddamage.substack.com/p/reflection...
lossanddamage.substack.com
Reflections on COP30: What happened? And what next?
Includes contributions by members of the Loss and Damage Collaboration
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Jonathan Kingham @jonkingh.bsky.social · 06/12/2025
This is so disgusting.
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
I've just published my second newsletter on loss and damage - this one reflecting on Trump (urgh) and climate finance. Mostly doom and gloom but also an obligatory note of hope, to paraphrase Jenny Offill open.substack.com/pub/lossandd...
open.substack.com
Loss and Damage funding in the era of Trump 2.0
Donald Trump’s climate-change denial, twinned with his pathological disdain for anything he deems part of a green agenda, is well known.
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Something I've been thinking about for a while and have finally launched: a newsletter on Loss and Damage - do consider subscribing if you're interested in the topic, or more broadly in climate justice and questions of power, geopolitics and accountability lossanddamage.substack.com?r=a2qm0&utm_...
lossanddamage.substack.com
The Loss and Damage Newsletter | Sophia Brown | Substack
A fortnightly newsletter on loss and damage: the most significant climate change impacts. Click to read The Loss and Damage Newsletter, by Sophia Brown, a Substack publication. Launched a day ago.
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Zoe Williams @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
My god, the sheer relief of reading a piece by someone who knows something about this football match and didn't just learn to spell Maccabi two days ago www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Standing with Maccabi’s football hooligans against local police – is that what patriotism looks like now? | Jonathan Liew
Tommy Robinson is said to be going to Villa Park as a Maccabi Tel Aviv fan. Do the politicians jumping on this bandwagon care what they are doing, asks Guardian columnist Jonathan Liew
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 21/10/2025
Labour are just all in on the "concede the basic framing to Reform, argue that they are preferable within that framework" approach and in addition to thinking it is bad on merits I also sincerely think it is going to get them absolutely mullered at the polls.
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
Due to climate change these heatwaves were 100 times more likely. But sure, let’s spend our days scapegoating refugees and making cringe comments about how much we love flags. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...
theguardian.com
UK experienced its hottest summer on record in 2025, Met Office says
Mean temperature over June, July and August was 16.1C as country endured four heatwaves
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hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
I have a new article out today. It's about an environmental turn in Palestinian arts and activism, and how environmental framings of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle enable different forms of identification and solidarity: journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
Planting Palestine: Food, environment, and the arts of solidarity - Hannah Boast, 2025
This article identifies an ‘environmental turn’ in contemporary Palestinian arts and activism. It argues that environmentalism, mediated especially through food...
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Prof. Liz Oakley-Brown @earlymodlancs.bsky.social · 30/07/2025
- 400 jobs to go at Lancaster University - 1 in 4 people will be made redundant But where's the financial evidence for this extreme action? Please read 👇 Sign the petition 👇 chng.it/7F52bThYqn
chng.it
Sign the Petition
Stop Mass Redundancies at Lancaster University – Hold Senior Management Accountable
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hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 29/07/2025
This letter is still open for signatures, but may not be for that much longer. If you've signed but your name hasn't appeared on the public list, it will be on the final letter, there are just too many names now to keep transferring them over!
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hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
Really grateful to everyone who's read and shared this, and especially people who've written to their MPs on behalf of the students stuck in Gaza. I hope we will have some good news to share before too long, so these students can get to the UK in time for the new academic year.
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hannah @hannahkateboast.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
The shortlists for the James Tait Black Memorial Prizes 2025 have been announced! There are two prizes, in Fiction and Biography, and it's been a pleasure to judge the Fiction prize. www.ed.ac.uk/news/connect...
Image of four book covers with photos of their authors. Books are The Coin, Yasmin Zaher, Phillip B. Williams, Ours, Lucas Rijneveld, My Heavenly Favourite, translated by Michele Hutchison, Mark Bowles, All My Precious Madness
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Anna Horroridge @anna-orridge.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
People who are still shouting that Israel is not committing genocide must be clapping their hands over their ears every time an Israeli minister steps onto a podium because
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich: We are destroying everything that remains in Gaza, the world isn't stopping us.
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 03/04/2025
Finally a news headline I can get on board with
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Myka Abramson @mykaabramson.bsky.social · 27/03/2025
Thrilled my book is out in the world! It's a book about the rise & fall of US hegemony; about the road novel's trafficking in the fantasies of individual freedom and self-making that propel it; and about why we need to shatter those attachments for a more collective vision, narrative and politics.
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Leigh Claire La Berge @lclaberge.bsky.social · 21/03/2025
Anyone who knows Columbia knows they've wanted to do plenty of this for a long time; it's just not that radical or disruptive for them. We shouldn't pretend otherwise. www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...
wsj.com
Exclusive | Columbia Yields to Trump in Battle Over Federal Funding
Columbia’s agreement is a significant moment in the intensifying battle between Trump and elite universities.
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Dave Vetter @davidrvetter.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Hard to overstate the gravity of this event, which could very well be the first major shot in a campaign to dismantle US civil society as we know it.
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Zach Boren @zdboren.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
as kemi badenoch describes the UK's net zero goal as 'impossible', it's worth noting that the country's emissions are the lowest they've been since 1872
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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Gaza is under attack, being bombed heavily. Those people. What a horrible fucking world.
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 18/03/2025
Such a brilliant episode on the backlash against BLM, wokeness, Higher Ed and Palestine. And the many ways in which class and race get weaponised by the right to build their authoritarianism. Definitely my favourite podcast atm. podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/t...
podcasts.apple.com
Woke Wars w/ Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Mike McCarthy
Podcast Episode · The Dig · 26/02/2025 · 2h 28m
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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 12/03/2025
For the @theguardian.com I wrote about the abduction of Mahmoud Khalil & Trump's exploitation of anti-Palestinian racism to descend the nation into authoritarianism, with the full collaboration of academia. No one is free until Palestine is free. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Trump is using Mahmoud Khalil to test his mass deportation plan | Heba Gowayed
The Palestinian student’s arrest at Columbia University is a harbinger of what’s to come on college campuses
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Kees van der Geest @keesvandergeest.bsky.social · 24/02/2025
📢📢 Only two weeks left to submit your abstract for the ECMN conference in Bonn (8-10 July 2025)! 86 colleagues have already submitted theirs! Here is a FAQ page and the submission form: www.climatemobilities.network/ecmn25/ Hope to see you along the Rhine River in Bonn this summer!!!
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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 26/02/2025
A new McCarthy era is upon us. Stupid, depressing, and dangerous as ever. I wonder whose name will carry the dunce cap in the history books. Too many are complicit. I’ll need to find upset and action, but for now I’m feeling grief at the dehumanization inherent to all this.
Gov Hochul orders CUNY remove Hunter college Palestine studies job posting calls for probe into ‘antisemitic theories’
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Simon Bunchuay-Peth @simonbunchuaypeth.bsky.social · 24/11/2024
I’ve just started a starter pack for ECMN members working on #ClimateChange, #Migration, and (im) #Mobilities. Feel free to reach out if you'd like to be added! go.bsky.app/Dan29j
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 22/11/2024
Sport may be a blunt tool of social change, but it’s time to take a stand against Israel | Jonathan Liew
dlvr.it
Sport may be a blunt tool of social change, but it’s time to take a stand against Israel | Jonathan Liew
As the bombing continues in Gaza, the inaction of bodies such as Fifa and the IOC becomes a glaring, conscious choice Probably you already know what this is. Probably before you read a word of it, you decided what it was, where you stand on it, how…
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Loss and Damage Collaboration (L&DC) @lossanddamage.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
“We hear that those who are responsible to provide financing do not have enough resources in relation to the needs while worldwide defence spending rose by 9% in 2023 to reach US$ 2.2 trillion with the US at the #1. We can't remain passive whilst death is given priority over life.” Cuba at #COP29
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ArabLit & ArabLit Quarterly @arablit.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
This publication, for READ PALESTINE WEEK (Nov 29 - December 5) is now available in digital format, free, at our Gumroad storefront: arablit.gumroad.com
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Heba Gowayed هبة جويد @hebagowayed.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Have not seen much on here on Sudan, so I'm amplifying this horrific report that shows the number who are killed is higher than previously estimated. Adding here other writing to read to understand this war that has displaced over 11 million people; the highest displacement crisis globally. 🧵
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 18/11/2024
Germany keeps being Germany 💆🏻‍♀️ www.theguardian.com/world/2024/n...
theguardian.com
German architecture award rescinded over British artist’s Israel boycott vow
Schelling Architecture Foundation refuses to give James Bridle his €10k prize after he signed open letter
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 15/11/2024
Ok I’m going to fully jump on the bandwagon now and try to do the Bluesky thing (I always hated Twitter anyway)
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Sophia Brown @sophiastories.bsky.social · 25/09/2023
I’m organising a seminar for #ACLA2024 - if you’re working on displacement and environmental issues, send us your abstracts! Would love to hear from you a build a proper conversation around these topics. Link for submissions: www.acla.org/cultural-res...
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