Announcing our 2024-25 First Book Workshop Competition Winner

We are pleased to announce that the winner of this year's Toynbee Prize Foundation First Book Workshop Competition is Burak Sayım.

His book project, The Making of Communism in the Middle East: Anti-colonial Revolutions, Global Networks, and Itinerant Militants, under contract with the University of California Press, examines the formative years of the communist movement in the Middle East in the context of a global wave of revolutionary upheaval. Based on archival research in 7 languages, the book focuses on networks straddling the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the Soviet Union. It interrogates the newly-minted communists’ interaction with the anti-colonial rebellions, emerging national frameworks, and Islam. Finally, by dissecting everyday practices of militancy, from cross-border practices to the question of language or prison life, The Making of Communism in the Middle East illustrates the global making of Middle Eastern revolutionary lives.

Sayım is currently a Humanities Research Fellow for the Study of the Arab World at New York University Abu Dhabi and an incoming MSCA-Cofund Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Political History of the University of Antwerp. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Journal of Global History, History Workshop Journal, and Itinerario, among others.

The Toynbee First Book Workshop Competition aims to support early career scholars in global history at a pivotal moment in their scholarly trajectory. To this end, the Toynbee Prize Foundation (TPF) funds an annual first book manuscript/work in progress workshop with scholars specifically chosen to comment on the selected Toynbee Early Career Scholar’s project.