Podmore Book Prize 2025

Joint Winners of the VCLA’s 2025 Podmore Book Prize

Muriel Debié
Alexandre le Grand en syriaque:
Maître des lieux, des savoirs et des temps
Les Belles Lettres

and

John Matthews
From Byzantium to Constantinople:
An Urban History
Oxford University Press

***

Honourable Mention for an Especially Significant First Book

Jeffrey Kotyk
Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity:
China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium
Brill

SHORTLIST 2025

Sarah Bassett, Style and Meaning in Late Antique Art: Ancients and Moderns on Seeing and Thinking (Cambridge University Press)

Muriel Debié, Alexandre le Grand en syriaque: Maître des lieux, des savoirs et des temps (Les Belles Lettres)

Lucy Grig, Popular Culture and the End of Antiquity in Southern Gaul, c. 400–550 (Cambridge University Press)

Jeffrey Kotyk, Sino-Iranian and Sino-Arabian Relations in Late Antiquity: China and the Parthians, Sasanians, and Arabs in the First Millennium (Brill)

Rita Lizzi Testa, Un Occidente rivolto a Est (455–554 d.C.) (L’Erma di Bretschneider)

John Matthews, From Byzantium to Constantinople: An Urban History (Oxford University Press)

Boudewijn Sirks, The Colonate in the Roman Empire (Cambridge University Press)

JUDGING PANEL 2025

Samra Azarnouche (France)
Susanna Elm (Germany / USA)
Kyle Harper (USA)
Olivier Hekster (Netherlands)
Samuel Lieu (UK)

Additional expert readers: Marco Cristini, Alberto Rigolio, Bryan Ward-Perkins