Sudhir Hazareesingh

Sudhir Hazareesingh joined the judging panel in 2022, having been awarded the Wolfson History Prize the year before for Black Spartacus: The Epic life of Toussaint Louverture, the extraordinary, gripping story of a former slave’s rise to become leader of the world’s first independent black state. His latest book is Daring to be Free: Rebellion and Resistance of the Enslaved in the Atlantic World (October 2025).

 

Hazareesingh was born in Mauritius. He has been a Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Balliol College, Oxford since 1990. He has written extensively about French intellectual and cultural history; among his books are The Legend of Napoleon, In the Shadow of the General and How the French Think. He won the Prix du Mémorial d’Ajaccio and the Prix de la Fondation Napoléon for the first of these, a Prix d’Histoire du Sénat for the second, and the Grand Prix du Livre d’Idées for the third. He won the Wolfson History Prize in 2021 for Black Spartacus: The Epic life of Toussaint Louverture. 

Image credit: Catherine Helie.