Roc Sandford is a writer, climate & nature dissident, and member of artists’ collectives Ocean Rebellion and Hard Art. Offering not only a lyrical take on nature’s mystery but a rational one on the dangerous stresses it faces, Roc's most recent book of nature writing, Burnt Rain (Hazel Press), was published in July 2023. Rebel, Rebel, an Emergency Dialogue, an experimental non-fiction account of being ordinary rebels in the early days of Extinction Rebellion, was written with Susana Medina and published in June 2024.
Writing, editing, profiles, reviews or interviews have appeared in the Telegraph, Times, Mail, Guardian, Observer, Sun, Mirror, Scotsman, Herald, Reuters & many other outlets. Roc’s work has been the subject of documentaries & dramatisations by BBC (twice), Dmitri Galitzine, Arte, ZDF, RTÉ One and Stacey Dooley amongst others.
As a mathematical geographer, Roc modelled perceptual bias at Bristol, Penn State, and UCL; was a member of David Graeber's Brains Trust; and is a director of Mathematical Sciences UK, Absurd Intelligence and community arts charity Gerry’s Pompeii and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. Having helped start Writers Rebel, David Graeber Institute and Catalysers, Roc presents a message of climate and nature collapse, inadequate complex system modelling, the currently dismal policy response and sector-specific asks at ministerial level and below to multilateral bodies, government, finance, accountancy & academia.
Roc lives part time in London and otherwise on the off-grid Hebridean Isle of Gometra.