B.C.-based scholar Wendy H. Wong is among the finalists for the 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize. She is nominated for her book, We, The Data: Human rights in the digital age.

The $50,000 prize is a Canadian award for books on international affairs. The winner will be announced March 6.

We, The Data: Human rights in the digital age is the only Canadian title on this year's list of five. It highlights how pervasive data collection and tracking are in everyday life. Laying the foundation for future policy, We, The Data calls for human rights to be extended to encourage human potential when data threatens to complicate how we progress.

Wong is a professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan in the department of political science. She co-authored two other books with Sarah S. Stroup, Internal Affairs and Authority Trap.

Finalists also include Seven Crashes: The economic crises that shaped globalization by Amercian scholar Harold James and Underground Empire: How America weaponized the world economy by Irish American scholar Henry Farrell.

Rounding out the short list are Power and Progress: Our 1000-year struggle over technology and prosperity by Turkish American economist Daron Acemoglu and British American economist Simon Johnson and Homelands: A personal history of Europe by British historian Timothy Garton Ash.

The Lionel Gelber Prize was founded in 1989 by the Canadian diplomat and is presented annually by the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.

Last year's winner was American political scientist Susan L. Shirk for her book Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise.