Scholar-activist Kusiak wins $100k Nine Dots Prize

Cambridge-based researcher and scholar-activist Dr Joanna Kusiak has won the 2022/23 Nine Dots Prize, receiving $100,000 (£82,500) and a book deal with Cambridge University Press for her "provocative" response to the question ‘Why has the rule of law become so fragile?’. 

The prize is awarded to creative thinking that tackles contemporary societal issues. It welcomes responses that draw on any perspective and discipline. 

Every two years, The Nine Dots Prize board sets a question and invites people to respond with a 3,000-word essay and a book proposal. The winner of the prize, awarded for a book that has not yet been written, receives $100,000 (£82,500). This enables them to spend time researching, developing their ideas, and turning their essay response into a full-length book, which is published by Cambridge University Press.  

Nearly 600 potential books from over 50 different countries were submitted in response to the 2022/23 question. They were judged anonymously by the board, which is chaired by Greek literature and culture professor Simon Goldhill.

The board is composed of 12 academics, authors, journalists and thinkers, including Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and journalist at the Atlantic, and Urvashi Butalia, director, founder and c.e.o. of the Kali imprint Zubaan Books.

Kusiak’s winning essay argued that the rule of law has always been fragile, a result of its paradoxical foundations which bind together law and politics. Taking the case of the 2021 Berlin referendum, in which voters decided to expropriate more than 240,000 properties from corporate landlords, Kusiak demonstrates the potential of radically legal politics as a path to deepen democracies and renew the rule of law.  

Funded by the Kadas Prize Foundation, the award is supported by Cambridge University Press and the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities (Crassh), both departments of the University of Cambridge. 

Kusiak will develop her response into a book, to be published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press in a variety of formats, including Open Access. The book will explore issues such as the Berlin movement and its attempt to take housing back from corporations, the relationship between law and justice, and the misuse of the law by forces including financial capitalism.  

Nine Dots Prize board member and judge David Runciman said of Kusiak’s winning entry: “What’s so exciting about this proposal from a new voice is the way it mixes the urgency of contemporary politics with the complexity of recent history. Nowhere has the rule of law been subject to more violently different interpretations than in Berlin over the past century.

"This exploration of the fight over property rights in the city uses the past to illuminate the present and uses the present to suggest an alternative future. Not everyone will agree with what’s in this book, but it is sure to provoke fierce argument, which is what the Nine Dots Prize is for.” 

Kusiak is a scholar-activist who works at the University of Cambridge, focusing on urban land, housing crises, and the progressive potential of law. In 2021 she was one of the spokespeople of Deutsche Wohnen & Co enteignen, Berlin’s successful referendum campaign to expropriate stock-listed landlords. She also writes and performs poetry. 

As part of the prize win, Kusiak is invited to spend a term at Crassh. She commented: “The rule of law promises that all people are free and equal, yet too often it fails to deliver on its promise, getting entangled by power.

"My book, provisionally titled Radically Legal, showcases how social movements in Berlin and Warsaw work with the law to renew its emancipatory potential. My proposal was the work of love, and I feel elevated by winning the Nine Dots Prize.” 

The 2020/21 award was won by Berlin-based journalist Trish Lorenz, who submitted the winning response to the question, ‘What does it mean to be young in an ageing world?’ Her book, Soro Soke: The Young Disruptors of an African Megacity, was published in May 2022.