Sophie Knowles-Mofford

Sophie is a Researcher for the International State Crime Initiative (ISCI) and has worked on funded projects investigating grand corruption and kleptocracy with Prof Kristian Lasslett. She is a doctoral candidate at UCL (anthropology department) studying conspiracy theories which is funded by the Wolfson Foundation and supervised by Prof Alex Pillen and Dr Rik Adriaans. Sophie studied UCL’s MSc in Politics, Violence and Crime and was awarded a distinction grade, and a place on the Dean’s List, 2021. She has a First Class BA (Hons.) in English Literature from Queen Mary, University of London. Her research interests include reputation laundering, grand corruption, kleptocracy, state-corporate crime, state crime, genocide, conspiracy theories, ambiguous language, and care work. She is trained in ethnographic methods, critical discourse analysis, and online investigative methodologies i.e. analysing financial documents, tracing actor connections, network mapping, and various OSINT techniques (inc. in opaque information contexts). She is the Assistant Editor of State Crime Journal, and prior to working with ISCI she was a care worker.