Polish scholar wins Nine Dots Prize and Cambridge book deal

Polish academic and activist Joanna Kusiak has been named this year’s winner of the Nine Dots Prize, which rewards those who provide creative analysis of and solutions to contemporary societal issues. The winner receives a book deal with Cambridge University Press as well as $100,000.

Every two years, the organisers of the prize put out a question, to which entrants must respond with a 3,000-word essay and a book proposal. This year’s question – “Why has the rule of law become so fragile?” – prompted 600 submissions from over 50 countries.

Among them, Kusiak, who is a junior research fellow at the University of Cambridge, was chosen as this year’s winner by the prize’s board, made up of academics and journalists.

In her essay, Kusiak, argues that the rule of law has always been fragile, as a result of its paradoxical foundations, which bind together law and politics, and that rather than a problem to be solved, the rule of law is “a tension field that needs to be managed”.

She points to the ongoing rule of law dispute in her home country, noting that, within her own lifetime, “Poland has already run through the whole cycle of the birth and demise of the democratic rule of law”.

She cites the problems of property reprivatisation in Warsaw as an example of how politically controversial decisions can be smuggled into technical legal arguments, claiming that in this case “the judiciary bypassed the democratic process and engineered a discreet path for restitution”.

She also refers to the 2021 Berlin referendum, in which voters decided to expropriate numerous properties from corporate landlords into public ownership, as an example of the potential of radically legal politics to renew the rule of law and deepen democracy.

Her book – which now, thanks to winning the prize, will be published next year by Cambridge University Press – is provisionally titled Radically Legal. It will showcase how social movements in Berlin and Warsaw work with the law to renew its emancipatory potential.

In an interview with Polish news magazine Wysokie Obcasy, Kusiak asked why, “if the authorities can smuggle socially harmful agendas through the law, can’t we as activists also find in the law an opportunity to create a better future for all of us?”

“My proposal was the work of love, and I feel elevated by winning the Nine Dots Prize,” Kusiak said of her achievement. “I am a scholar-activist, which means that I only engage with topics that I believe are socially important.”

Kusiak also revealed to Wysokie Obcasy how winning the prize has motivated her to think outside the box in her research. “The prize gives me the freedom to take risks, to experiment, and not have to be forced in life to stick only to safe thought options.”

Main image credit: Andy Bate

Anna Hackett

Anna Hackett is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a recent graduate of European Studies from Trinity College Dublin and has had previous journalistic experience with the Irish Independent News & Media group.