Award-winning author, broadcaster and academic Gary Younge to Chair British Academy Book Prize 2027

Professor Gary Younge HonFBA, the award-winning author, broadcaster and Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester, is today announced as the new Chair of judges for the British Academy Book Prize.

Formerly editor-at-large at The Guardian, Gary Younge has written seven books, most recently "Pigeonholed: Creative Freedom as an Act of Resistance" (Faber, 2025). Winner of the 2023 Orwell Prize for Journalism and the 2025 Robert. B. Silvers Prize for Journalism, he has written for the New York Review of Books, Granta, GQ and New Statesman, among others, and made radio and television documentaries on subjects ranging from gay marriage to Brexit. Gary makes a welcome return to the British Academy Book Prize, having been a judge in 2023.

He is joined by a distinguished panel of judges who all remain on the jury for another year. They are: Professor Shadreck Chirikure FBA, Archaeological Scientist, Edward Hall Professor of Archaeological Science, University of Oxford; the broadcaster and former BBC foreign correspondent Bridget Kendall HonFBA, the journalist and broadcaster Ritula Shah, currently presenting a daily show on Classic FM; and Professor Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad FBA, Distinguished Professor of Comparative Religion and Philosophy at Lancaster University.

The £25,000 international prize recognises outstanding books in the fields of the humanities and social sciences. The judges will be looking for the best works of non-fiction, published in English between 1 April 2025 and 30 April 2026, that combine original thinking, high-quality research, exceptional storytelling – and can change how we see today’s world.

Gary Younge comments: “It’s an honour to judge a prize that seeks to connect public interest with serious scholarship and important ideas. We want to make sure that academics and writers who produce strong research, written in a readable and accessible way, reach the wide audience they deserve. This mission sits at the very heart of the British Academy Book Prize.”

The winner of British Academy Book Prize will next be awarded in March 2027 and a shortlist of up to six books will be announced in January. The winner will receive £25,000 and each of the shortlisted authors £1,000.

The deadline for submissions is Thursday 30 April 2026, and the winner in 2025 was Sunil Amrith for "The Burning Earth: An Environmental History of the Last 500 Years".

The British Academy Book Prize is enabled by funding from the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Hawthornden Foundation and Ford Foundation.

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