Book authored by Professor Naila Kabeer and published by LSE Press wins prestigious prize
A book authored by Professor Naila Kabeer and published by the School’s non-profit, open access publisher LSE Press has won the 2026 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award.
This prize, a joint initiative from the American Council of Learned Societies and Arcadia, recognises exceptional, innovative and open access books.
The winning authors and publishers will attend a prizegiving ceremony at the New York Public Library in November. Authors receive the $20,000 ACLS Open Access Book Prize and publishers receive the Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award of $30,000 to support forthcoming open access books.
Published by LSE Press in 2024, Renegotiating Patriarchy investigates how Bangladesh has achieved unexpected social progress in recent decades, particularly for women, and how this positive social change reflected the agency exercised by ordinary, often very poor, women in their everyday lives. The book has received stellar reviews, described as a ‘masterpiece’ a ‘landmark account’ and as Kabeer’s ‘magnum opus’.
Commenting on her win, Professor Naila Kabeer said: “I am both honoured and delighted to hear that my book has been awarded one of the 2026 ACLS Open Access Book Prizes and that LSE Press, my publisher, has won an Arcadia Open Access Publishing Award.
“I am personally honoured that the distinguished panel of judges set up by ACLS deemed the book outstanding in bringing together ideas, arguments and evidence in order to foreground the agency of ordinary people in producing one of the most intriguing paradoxes in contemporary development studies. And I am delighted that in establishing these Open Access awards, the ACLS recognizes that the important stories that academics tell about the world they live in should not stay within the confines of the academy but should reach the policy makers, practitioners and general readers who are also working to understand that world and to improve it/make it better.”
For Professor Kabeer, the value of making the book open access has become increasingly clear since publication. Speaking to ACLS about the book, she said: “While my initial motivation in pursuing the open access option had been to make the book affordable and available to students, particularly to those in the Global South, I have come to realize that open access makes a difference in the world of policy and practice as well. Policy makers and practitioners always emphasize that they are too busy to read books, but being able to download a book by clicking a link seems to make it more likely that they will read the book.”
Philippa Grand, Head of Publishing at LSE Press, said: ‘we are enormously proud and delighted that Naila Kabeer’s exceptional book has been recognised in this way and incredibly honoured to be recipients of this prestigious prize. To win the Arcadia Open Access Award means so much to us as it allows us to further our mission to make the best social science research freely available without fees for authors or readers’.
Renegotiating Patriarchy: Gender, Agency and the Bangladesh Paradox is available to read and download for free from LSE Press.
Read more about the book in an interview with Professor Kabeer on LSE Review of Books.