Sophia Smith Galer is an award-winning author, journalist, and content creator whose work focuses on language, technology and culture.

She is credited with pioneering journalism on TikTok in the United Kingdom, using short-form video to report for the BBC and VICE News across religion, technology and health. She has been recognised internationally for her innovation with a Webby, a British Journalism Award, a Forbes 30 Under 30 listing and a spot on British Vogue’s 25 Most Influential Women list in 2022.

Sophia’s videos - many of which explore linguistics, translation, and the politics of language online - have been viewed 200 million times. She is a Contributing Editor for Translator Magazine and writes a newsletter about language research and rights called The Glottal Stop. When she’s not doing that, she’s consulting and speaking about journalism innovation around the world. In 2025, she launched her first app, Sophiana, which helps journalists turn their work into vertical video scripts; it won the Georgina Henry Award for Digital Innovation, a winning place on the International Center for Journalists Disarming Disinformation Solutions Challenge, and a position amongst TikTok’s 50 Global Changemakers.

She is the author of How to Kill a Language, an investigation into the phenomenon of linguicide and the forces - political, technological and cultural - that determine which languages survive. The book will be published in 2026 by William Collins in the UK and Crown in the US.

Photo credit: Sarah Hosney