Paris-Liège Prize 2026: Sophie Bessis

Meeting with the winner of Prix Paris-Liège 2026 : Sophie Bessis Created by Ville de Liège with the support of Ville de Paris, the Prix Paris-Liège Essay Prize honors the best original essay in the human sciences published in the French language each year. It is awarded by a equal-representation jury composed of Belgian and French figures, with the presidency alternating between the two countries. For its 2026 edition, the prize was awarded to Sophie Bessis for her essay La civilisation judéo-chrétienne. Anatomie d'une imposture published by Editions Les Liens qui libèrent. The award ceremony will take place ON THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2026 at 6:00 PM at La Boverie and will be followed by a meeting with the winner. Sophie Bessis is a historian specializing in North-South relations and the condition of women in Africa and the Arab world. A former editor-in-chief of Jeune Afrique, she has also taught at Inalco and Paris I before serving as a researcher at IRIS. She is the author of several works, including L’Occident et les autres (La Découverte, 2000), Histoire de la Tunisie de Carthage à nos jours (Tallandier, 2019), and Je vous écris d’une autre rive, lettre à Hannah Arendt (Elyzard, 2021). La civilisation judéo-chrétienne. Anatomie d'une imposture For forty years, the concept of " Judeo-Christian civilization" has dominated political and media discourse in the West, presented as the cultural foundation of Europe and Amérique du Nord. But what does this expression, which has become a hegemonic reference, conceal? Co-opted by various actors—states, political movements, or nationalisms—this concept is used from all sides to rewrite history, serving in Europe to obscure two millennia of anti-Semitic persecutions, to deny the contribution of the East in its past, and to exclude Islam from its cultural references. Zionism, and subsequently the State of Israel from its creation, needed to assert their exclusive anchoring in the West, proclaiming themselves today as the "advanced bastion of Judeo-Christian civilization" against the "Arab-Muslim enemy," while Arab nationalisms saw in this expression a convenient instrument to deny the Jewish dimension of their own countries' history. Sophie Bessis reveals how this binary pair, far from being neutral, is used everywhere to make cultural and political convergences impossible, which could otherwise be so many paths to peace. Award ceremony and meeting with Sophie Bessis Jeudi on November 5 at 6:00 PM at La Boverie Entrée, free admission Book your ticket online via the ticketing office