Prize type: Political writing book prizeTTTT

Colin Crouch is an external scientific member of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies at Cologne and professor emeritus of the University of Warwick. He previously taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Oxford (Fellow of Trinity College), and the European University Institute, Florence. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, and of the Academy of Social Sciences, and a member of the Accademia delle Scienze di Torino. His most recent books include The Globalization Backlash (2019); Will the Gig Economy Prevail? (2019); Manifesto for Social Europe (2020); and Post-Democracy after the Crises (2020). His Rethinking Political Identity: Citizens and Parties in Europe will be published in 2025.

Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. Her widely acclaimed debut book was Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire, 1871–1918. Her second book. Beyond the Wall: East Germany 1949-1990 is an international bestseller and has been translated into sixteen languages. Katja is a visiting Research Fellow at King’s College London and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. She is a columnist for the Berliner Zeitung and writes about current affairs in Germany and Europe for newspapers in Britain and the United States. She is co-host of the podcast The New Germany.

Thangam Debbonaire was Member of Parliament for Bristol West 2015-2024, serving as a Labour Whip and as Shadow Brexit Minister during those turbulent years. From the start of Keir Starmer’s leadership she served in his Shadow Cabinet as Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, then Shadow Leader of the House, finally as Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She now writes, does media and provides consultancy primarily for arts creative industries and cultural partnerships.

Thangam was a professional cellist, now amateur, playing regularly with a string quartet. She worked for 26 years tackling violence against women, most recently with male perpetrators.

Cindy Yu is Assistant Editor (Broadcast) at The Spectator, where she also hosts the magazine’s Chinese Whispers podcast. The podcast is a deep dive into all the intriguing themes of Chinese politics, society and history that often go under the radar of mainstream China reporting.

She was born in Nanjing, China. She has written extensively about China for The Spectator, the Telegraph, Foreign Policy, among others. She is a frequent commentator on China issues for the BBC, TalkTV, RTE News, Channel 4 and GB News.

Lord Darroch is a retired UK civil servant and life peer in the House of Lords. His diplomatic career spanned over 40 years, primarily focusing on national security issues and European policy. Most recently, Lord Darroch served as the British Ambassador to the United States (2016-2019). Prior to Washington, he was National Security Adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron (2012-2015), and in that role, oversaw issues such as the rise of Daesh in Iraq and Syria, Russian aggression in Ukraine, and the collapse of government authority in Libya. In addition, he worked in senior roles on UK-EU policy and multilateral negotiations, including spells as Permanent Representative to the European Union (2007-2011) and as EU Adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair (2004-2007).

Lola Seaton is an associate editor at New Left Review and a contributing writer at the New Statesman, where she mainly reviews books. Her writing has appeared in the Financial Times Magazine, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and the Point magazine, among other places. She lives in London.

Rohan Silva is the founder of Libreria bookshop in East London, and co-founder of Second Home, which has built creative spaces for cultural events and entrepreneurship in London, Lisbon and Los Angeles. Rohan writes columns and book reviews for the Evening Standard, Times and Observer, and has been a member of the judging panels for the Samuel Johnson Book Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize.

Christina Lamb is Chief Foreign Correspondent at The Sunday Times and one of Britain’s leading foreign journalists as well as a bestselling author. She has been awarded Foreign Correspondent of the Year six times as well as Europe’s top war reporting prize, the Prix Bayeux, and was recently given the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society of Editors and Outstanding Impact Award by Amnesty International for her work on ISIS camps in Syria. Christina has written ten books: Our Bodies, Their Battlefields was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize, the Bailie Gifford and the Kapuscinski award.

Sunder Katwala is the director of British Future, a non-partisan thinktank on issues of identity, immigration and race, and the author of How to be a Patriot published by Harper North in 2023. He was previously General Secretary of the Fabian Society and an Observer journalist.

Peter Frankopan is Professor of Global History at Oxford University where he has been Senior Research Fellow since 2000. His books include The Silk Roads: A New History of the World; The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World; The First Crusade: The Call from the East; and most recently The Earth Transformed: An Untold History. His books have been translated into more than forty languages.

Sukhdev Sandhu directs the Colloquium for Unpopular Culture at New York University, runs the Texte und Töne publishing imprint, and is the author of London Calling: How Black and Asian Writers Imagined A City, Night Haunts, and Other Musics.

Cristina Odone is an Italian-British journalist, editor, and freelance writer. Cristina is the founder of the Parenting Circle Charity, and was the former Editor of the Catholic Herald, Contributor to The Telegraph, and Deputy Editor of the New Statesman.

Martha Lane Fox (CBE) is the President of the British Chambers of Commerce, Chancellor of the Open University and Chair of WeTransfer. She is a Patron of AbilityNet, Reprieve, Camfed and Just for Kids Law. From 2009 to 2013 she was Digital Champion for the UK and helped to create the Government Digital Service. She became a crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords in March 2013.

Kojo Koram is a writer and an academic, teaching at the School of Law at Birkbeck College, University of London. Born in Accra, Ghana and raised on Merseyside, he is now based in London. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in November 2011. In addition to his academic writing, he has written for the New Statesman, the Guardian, Dissent, The Nation, and The Washington Post and has appeared on CNN and Sky News. He is the editor of The War on Drugs and the Global Colour Line (Pluto Press 2019) and author of Uncommon Wealth: Britain and the Aftermath of Empire (John Murray 2022).

Alice Bell heads up climate policy at the Wellcome Trust, which she recently joined after seven years at the climate action charity, Possible. She previously worked as a writer and academic, specialising in the politics of science and technology, and is the author of Our Biggest Experiment, a history of the climate crisis.

Kennetta Hammond Perry, PhD, FRHistS serves as founding Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre and is a Reader in History at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK. She has published widely, including a book-length study on Caribbean migration to Britain following World War II titled London Is The Place For Me:  Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race (Oxford Press, 2016).

Stephen Bush is political editor of the New Statesman. He co-hosts the New Statesman podcast and writes for both the print magazine and the NS website. He has also written for the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Financial Times and the i.

Anne McElvoy is Senior Editor of The Economist and was its global Policy Editor from 2010-16. She writes on political and international affairs and runs Economist Radio, the company’s awarding-winning audio arm.

Anne is a former bureau chief in Moscow, Berlin and the Balkans, and has also written weekly politics column for the Evening Standard for 15 years. She also presents Across the Red Line on BBC Radio 4.