2026 C.B. Macpherson Prize

Excerpt from jury report: This new approach to theorizing contested territory details the ways democratic rule over land is incompatible with territorial sovereignty. Rejecting the invasive world-building that accompanies conquest and colonization, Jurkevics develops an alternative account of sovereignty. Arguing for democracy in the context of regimes of overlapping, contested rule, Contested Territory sets out a response to global crises of land dispossession, mass migration, and environmental destruction. In reconceptualizing democracy beyond sovereign bounds, Jurkeviks calls on us to “deconstruct our inherited territorial imaginary” and related legal, political, and economic systems and to replace it with democratic worldbuilding in the pursuit of emancipation.