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Jacqueline Rose joins judging panel for 2018 Man Booker Prize

Professor Rose will be a judge of the prestigious fiction award as it enters its 50th year.

Jacqueline Rose, Professor of Humanities and Co-Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, has been announced a judge on 2018’s Man Booker Prize panel as the prestigious fiction award enters its 50th year.

Rose is known internationally for her writing on feminism, psychoanalysis, literature and the politics and ideology of Israel-Palestine.

She said: “It is a privilege to be on the Man Booker Prize Jury.  When times are so hard for so many across the world, we have never been more in need of fictional voices to examine the darkness, explore what escapes official attention, and imagine new worlds.”

Alongside Rose, the panel consists of: crime writer Val McDermid; cultural critic Leo Robson; artist and graphic novelist Leanne Shapton; and philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah, who will chair the panel.

Gaby Wood, Literary Director of the Booker Prize Foundation, said: “This year’s judging panel is not only stellar in its distinction, its members have a stunningly broad range of tastes and enthusiasms too. They are all long-standing champions of creative work who will be open to any excellent novel that may come their way, regardless of genre or geography.”

Birkbeck has a long-standing relationship with the Booker Prize Foundation, and each year invites a past recipient of the award to discuss their winning novel at an event for students, staff, alumni and other members of the College community. This year saw this initiative run for the seventh time, with Julian Barnes discussing The Sense of an Ending, his 2011 Man Booker Prize winning title.  

Birkbeck academics have a strong association with Man Booker judging panels. Professor Russell Celyn Jones was a panellist in 2002 – and also chairs the College’s annual Man Booker event – while Dame Professor Marina Warner chaired the Man Booker International Prize panel in 2015. She was herself a Booker-shortlisted author for her 1988 title The Lost Father. 

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