Brian Thornton wins The Conversation Prize for his 'shocking and unnerving' essay

Brian Thornton has won The Conversation Prize 2025 for his story Convicting the Innocent, a look at the "systemic barriers" faced by those "wrongly convicted of crimes". He has been awarded £1,000 and mentorship from Faber and Curtis Brown.

The prize was launched in October 2024 by Elliot Prior at Curtis Brown and Fiona Crosby at Faber, in partnership with The Conversation, to discover "the most promising new writers from the world of academia" who want to develop a trade publishing career. 

Thornton’s article and book idea were shortlisted by Miriam Frankel, senior science editor at The Conversation UK, Priya Atwal, historian and community history fellow at the University of Oxford, and Alice Hunt, professor at the University of Southampton.

The judges said: "The research on the current failings of the legal system would be of great interest to the general public, especially following the fallout from the Post Office scandal. The essay is well written and punchy, if shocking and unnerving. The use of case studies to tell the story works very well and makes the piece immediately emotionally gripping – with great potential to work as a non-fiction book."

The winner is a senior lecturer and programme leader for the BA (Hons) Journalism course at the University of Winchester, as well as a former producer for the BBC’s Newsnight. He is also one of the founders of the University of Winchester’s Criminal Justice Research Network, which specialises in issues related to miscarriages of justice, and is the founder and director of the Winchester Innocence Project.

Yvonne Reddick and Nicholas Carter were close runners-up in the competition, for Fire on Winter Hill and Living Stone, respectively.