Transdisciplinary Philosophy Book Prize Long List Released
The Royal Institute of Philosophy recently announced the longlist of books being considered for the 2025 Nayef Al-Rodhan International Prize in Transdisciplinary Philosophy.
The £20,000 prize recognizes “books that transcend academic boundaries” that “further… our understanding of the key challenges facing the world today” in areas such as the future of humanity, disruptive technologies, global governance, transcultural understanding, scientific innovation, human nature, and transdisciplinary methodologies.
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The longlisted authors and books are:
- Manuel Almagro (2025), The Rise of Polarization: Affects, Politics, and Philosophy (Routledge)
- Jonathan Birch (2024), The Edge of Sentience: Risk and Precaution in Humans, Other Animals, and AI (Oxford University Press)
- Peter Godfrey-Smith (2024), Living on Earth: Life, Consciousness and the Making of the Natural World (William Collins)
- Jules Holroyd (2025), Oppressive Praise (Oxford University Press)
- Adam Lovett (2024), Democratic Failures and the Ethics of Democracy (University of Pennsylvania Press)
- Alva Noë (2023), The Entanglement: How Art and Philosophy Make Us What We Are (Princeton University Press)
- Prashant Parikh (2024), Meaning Is Everywhere: Language, Artificial Intelligence, and Society (Hackett Publishing Company)
- Alan Thomas, Alfred Archer, and Bart Engelen (2024), Extravagance and Misery: The Emotional Regime of Market Societies (Oxford University Press)
The judging panel is chaired by Constantine Sandis (Lex Academic, Hertfordshire), and includes Lisa Bortolotti (Birmingham), Jude Browne (Cambridge), Francesca Cacucci (UCL), Lambros Malafouris (Oxford), Alexis Papazoglou (LSE), and Barry Smith (Institute of Philosophy, London).
The prize is named for and funded by Nayef Al-Rodhan, an Honorary Fellow of St Antony’s College, University of Oxford and Head of the Geopolitics & Global Futures Program at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy.
The winner of the prize will be announced later this fall.
Congrats to the nominees. My comment reflects on the prize itself, not the nominated work. The prize rewards BOOKS that “transcend academic boundaries.” I find this discouraging because the book is a disciplinarily niche medium. Transdisciplinary work is typically done best through deep collaborations and alternative venues that violate academic and disciplinary expectations—as a result, often harming career prospects. The restriction to books (and note that all but one are single-author) seems antithetical to transdisciplinaryity. I wish there were this kind of support and recognition for work that is riskier and less acquiescent to traditional disciplinary expectations.