Sofia Varino, PhD, is a writer and public scholar based in Berlin. With a focus on intersectional queer feminisms, their research and teaching interests include transnational American studies, environmental and medical humanities, science and technology studies, and critical pedagogy. Their recent book Aquatopia: Climate Interventions (Routledge, 2023), a queer decolonial study of global environmental politics co-written with May Joseph, was selected for a 2023 Spotlight by the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Varino has published in leading academic journals including Catalyst, Shima, Somatechnics, European Journal of Women’s Studies, and Women’s Studies Quarterly, and their research has been featured in TheChemical SensitivityPodcast, Unravelling the AnthropocenePodcast, and the BBC’s Talking Movies.
Varino is co-editor of the Kaleidoscope book series (Routledge) and co-editor of a special issue of Somatechnics on “Data Matters: (Un)doing Data and Gender in the Life Sciences” (Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Varino’s poetry has appeared in Poetry Wales, The Hythe, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Poetry International, among other literary magazines, and their first poetry pamphlet Natural Language was published by Dancing Girl Press (2017). A second pamphlet titled You’re My Strange is forthcoming in 2025. Varino is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Potsdam’s English and American Studies Department, affiliated with the minor cosmopolitanisms doctoral program (a cooperation established among the University of Potsdam, Humboldt University of Berlin and Freie University Berlin), and an Associate Member at the Transdisciplinary Gender Studies Center at Humboldt, where they have lecture regularly. Varino holds a PhD in Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies with a Certificate in Art and Philosophy from Stony Brook State University of New York (SUNY).