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Eva Pils joined King’s College London in September 2014 and is Reader in Transnational Law. Eva studied law, philosophy and sinology in Heidelberg, London and Beijing. She qualified as a lawyer in Germany and holds a PhD in law from University College London. Before joining The Dickson Poon School of Law she was an associate professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, where she co-founded the Centre for Rights and Justice.

She has previously also taught at Cornell University Law School and at University College London, and held visiting positions at New York University Law School, Cornell Law School, the London School of Economics Law Department, and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

Dr Pils is a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the U.S.-Asia Law Institute of New York University Law School; an external member of the CUHK Centre for Social Innovation Studies; and an affiliated member of the Lau China Institute, the Transnational Law Institute and the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law at King’s. 

Dr Pils’ research interests lie in the areas of human rights, comparative constitutional law, law and development, legal philosophy and the law in China. Her work has addressed the role and situation of Chinese human rights lawyers, property law and land and eviction rights, criminal justice, access to justice and conceptions of justice in China. Her publications on these topics have drawn on her fieldwork in China.  They have appeared in academic publications as well as in the popular press. She is frequently invited to comment on current issues in the media (e.g. in the Guardian, New York Times, Telegraph, Sunday Times, and Washington Post).

She has supervised PhD students working on various aspects of the rights of the individual and access to justice in China and on human rights more widely. 

Current PhD student supervision:

• Elizabeth Rhoads, ‘Continuity and Change: Contours of Land Control and State Crime in Burma/Myanmar’

Books

• China’s human rights lawyers: advocacy and resistance, Routledge, Abingdon, 2014.
• Comparative Perspectives on Criminal Justice in China, co-edited with Mike McConville, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2013.
• Liu Xiaobo, Charter 08 and the Challenges of Political Reform in China, co-edited with Fu Hualing and Jean-Philippe Béja, Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong, 2012.

Articles and book chapters 

• 'Resisting Dignity Takings in China' forthcoming in Law & Social Inquiry  

• ‘Voice, reflexivity and say: governing access to land in China,’ in Olivier De Schutter and Katharina Pistor, Governing Access to Essential Resources, Columbia University Press, pp. 127-155..
• ‘Contending conceptions of ownership and property in urbanizing China,’ in John Gillespie and Fu Hualing (eds.), Resolving Land Disputes in East Asia, Cambridge University Press,  2014. 
• ‘The dislocation of the Chinese Human Rights Movement,’ in Stanley Lubman (editor), The Evolution of Law Reform in China, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011. 

Comment Pieces

• ‘If Anything Happens…:’ Meeting the Now-detained Human Rights Lawyers / “要是将来有什么事的话…:”与现仍被羁押的人权律师见面 by Eva Pils, ChinaChange, 10 January 2016
• Contribution to Conversation on ‘China’s Rule of Law Takes an Ugly Turn,’ ChinaFile / Foreign Policy, 14 July 2015
• 'We cannot go back – debating the Human Rights Act at King’s College London,’ guest contribution to UK Human Rights Blog, 15 May 2015,

• ‘“Where the Emperor can’t enter:” rethinking the case for property and housing rights in China,’ Laboratory for advanced research on the global economy, Open Democracy, June 2014. 

Undergraduate 

• Public Law

Postgraduate 

• Human Rights in International & Transnational Perspectives
• Law & Society in China