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The 2026 Political Theory Prize for the best first book in the field has been awarded to Shuk Ying Chan for her work, Postcolonial Global Justice (Princeton University Press, 2024).
The Political Theory Prize awards an outstanding debut book in political theory written in English. Co-sponsored by the Contemporary Political Theory journal, the prize was conceived in collaboration with our Standing Groups on Kantian Political Thought, Political Theory and International Political Theory, and Methods of Normative Political Theory.
The winning book offers a new account of global justice that recovers anticolonial thought for resisting a neocolonial age.
The book has the potential of giving new momentum to debates in global justice, not only by bringing in new voices, but also by showing that political questions on the global level cannot be completely separated from economic and cultural questions, but need to be considered holistically.
2026 Political Theory Prize Jury
Read the full laudation (PDF, opens in a new tab)Shuk Ying Chan is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Political Theory at University College London. Prior to UCL, she was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College and the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford University. She completed her PhD in political theory at Princeton University in 2021, and her dissertation was awarded the 2022 Leo Strauss Award (for best dissertation in political philosophy) from the American Political Science Association.
Her research interests sit at the intersection of Black and anticolonial political thought and normative political theory. She is currently working on two new projects: one on the ethics of resistance in authoritarian settings, and another on the moral-psychological imprints of colonial oppression.
I am very honoured to receive the Political Theory Prize. Writing a book that moves between very different philosophical traditions would not be possible without the encouragement and support of terrific mentors and colleagues along the way, and I am deeply grateful to them.