Chen First is a PhD researcher and Property Law tutor at The Dickson Poon School of Law, funded by the London Interdisciplinary Social Science Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS DTP). She is interested in the possibilities of law as a vehicle for positive social change.

Chen's doctoral research, "Room for All? Transformative Property Rights", asks how property law can be rethought to address the structural roots of the housing crisis in urban settings - and how housing and property rights can enhance the sense of community and solidarity, shaping how people live together, how resources are shared, and how power circulates within society. Centred on the concepts of prefiguration and real utopianism - learning from existing institutions that expand the limits of what seems possible - the project examines existing and emerging models of housing that challenge dominant market logics and reveal alternative ways of organising property rights and collective life. The research asks what legal, social, and cultural mechanisms allow such alternatives to endure and function in practice, bringing together legal analysis, property theory and utopian theory to reimagine property law as a dynamic field of experimentation rather than a fixed set of rules.

This research grows out of Chen's professional background spanning law, social work, and public policy. Before joining KCL, she worked across a range of public sector roles: working on Supreme Court cases in constitutional and administrative law, developing legal frameworks and policy for children's rehabilitation within criminal procedure, and conducting research about housing affordability and inclusivity from a comparative lens.

Chen holds an LLM in Public Law from the London School of Economics and is a qualified lawyer and social worker.

Research interests

• Property law
• Solidarity
• Community
• Human rights

Publications

• Chen First, Are the Laws Still Poor? Reflections on the Right to Work Limiting the Right to an Adequate Standard of Living. LSE Law Review, 8(3), 322–367 (2023).

Supervisors

• Davina Cooper
• Yael Lifshitz