Announcing the winners of the inaugural First Book Prize for early career researchers
We are proud to announce 10 winners of the First Book Prize 2025, awarded to early career researchers in the humanities and social sciences.
The First Book Prize aims to support emerging scholars by providing broad dissemination for their first monograph. Each winner will have their debut book published fully open access—with all fees waived—alongside hardback publication.
In the inaugural year of the prize, we received nearly 100 submissions. Following a rigorous, three-stage review process that included external peer review, our Global Prize Committee agreed to nominate 10 projects as recipients of the prize:
Controlling Migrants: Vagrancy, Indentured Labor, and the Policing of Mobility in Germany
By situating German migration controls within the entangled histories of colonialism, racism, and labour exploitation, Axster challenges state-centric accounts of border regimes.
Age on the Page: Narrative Strategies and the Cultural Perception of Women’s Aging
By drawing a link between narrative strategies and ageism, this book sheds light on the complex ways in which language and storytelling effect real, material impact upon society, writ large, and on the treatment of older women within society, in particular.
Decolonisation, Language Politics, and Narratives of Failure in Morocco
An innovative contribution to postcolonial studies, Kaoutar Ghilani’s book offers the first comprehensive political history of Morocco’s Arabisation policy and its dramatic abandonment in 2019.
Precarious Archiving: Colonial Legacies and Digital Failures in South African Heritage
A timely and important examination of the impact of the ‘digital turn’ in archival practices and, in turn, on heritage more broadly.
Commemorative Justice
Commemorative Justice addresses a pressing and contentious issue in public life today: the remembrance of prominent historical figures whose celebrated legacies are increasingly challenged by growing awareness of their moral and political failings.
When Should an Algorithm Decide? An Account of the Potential and Limitations of AI in the Judicial Role
A scholarly, brave, and ambitious attempt to unpick the complexities of not only legal decision-making, but ultimately also of human reasoning.
It’s Okay to Despair about Climate Change: Militant Pessimism in the Face of Climate Breakdown
The book challenges the dominance of optimism and its insistence on hope, offering a compelling case for what the author calls ‘militant pessimism’—an orientation that embraces despair not as defeat but as a source of moral clarity, solidarity, and radical action.
Common Law and English Commercial Theatre, c.1597-1624
Powell changes how we see the culture of Shakespearean theatre, mainly in London, by focusing on how common law shaped its everyday operations and even its artistic dimensions.
The Politics of Education and Hope in Forced Migration: Journeys of Syrian Young People Across the World
Through compelling life story interviews, Salem traces the complex trajectories of young Syrian refugees, revealing how education, politics, and policy intersect across diverse contexts.
Black Women and the Politics of Respect in Jamaica: Seeing from Da Yaad
A highly original and illuminating ethnographic study which sets focus on the relationships between Black Jamaican women in marginalized communities and leaders of criminal organizations, a topic so far unexplored in scholarly literature.
Sophie Goldsworthy
Global Academic Publisher
“As a university press, we are deeply committed to supporting early career researchers and amplifying work that engages with society’s most pressing challenges. We’re delighted to see such breadth and depth in the work of our prize winers, tackling subjects from ageing and migration to decolonization and digital archives in the Global South.
“It’s our hope that, as an inaugural cohort, this outstanding group of researchers will become a meaningful network for each other, just as we look forward to collaborating closely with them in building clearer pathways to publishing for scholars at the early stages of their careers and maximizing the global impact of their work.”
Anh Quah Nguyen, one of the winning recipients, added:
“Receiving the prize not only means a significant step for me in my academic career. It means that I am able to freely develop my writing and a perspective that is somewhat unorthodox in my discipline, to bring together philosophical thinking with my experience as a political organizer, and write philosophy for activists, thinkers, organizers, and philosophers alike.
“As the climate crisis escalates, philosophy has a crucial task to guide our thinking through one of the worst crises humanity has ever faced. I hope my book will be a small contribution towards this.”
Hiba Salem, one of our prize winners from the University of Oxford, will be giving a lecture on 13 November 2025 about her winning book, and is free to attend in-person or online.
Submissions for the First Book Prize 2026 will open on 1 January 2026. You can find out more about the prize and each of this year’s winning books here.
You can read our publishing resources for early career researchers here.
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