Vigjilenca Abazi is Lecturer in Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London. Her work focuses on law and technology, democratic accountability, and EU law and governance. She is widely recognised for pioneering the field of EU whistleblower law.

Vigjilenca holds a PhD and LLM from the University of Amsterdam and an LLM from Yale Law School, where she was elected LL.M. Representative and now serves on the Yale Law School Executive Committee. She is admitted to practise law in New York. Prior to joining King’s, she was a tenured Assistant Professor at Maastricht University and held resident fellowships at Yale Law School (Information Society Project), NYU School of Law (Emile Noël Fellow), and Columbia Law School (Fulbright Scholar).

She has led and collaborated on high-impact research projects supported by several competitive grants. She is the author or editor of five books and over 30 peer-reviewed publications, including the monograph Official Secrets and Oversight in the EU (OUP, 2019), the first to examine secrecy in EU law. Her article on the EU Whistleblowing Directive was the most read in the Industrial Law Journal for 12 consecutive months and has been cited in the landmark case C-147/23 European Commission v Poland before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Her work has been featured in The New Yorker, Le Monde, Bloomberg, and Der Spiegel, and translated into eight languages. She has served on the editorial boards of the European Constitutional Law Review, Journal of European Integration, European Journal of Risk Regulation, and the Yale Journal of Law and Technology. She has also been a guest researcher at the University of Oxford, the European University Institute, and the iCourts Centre of Excellence at the University of Copenhagen.

Her scholarship has profoundly influenced legal and policy reform, particularly in whistleblower protection. She co-authored the model EU Directive that laid the foundation for the EU Whistleblower Directive, endorsed by over 240 civil society and industry organisations. Her expertise has been sought in testimony before the European Parliament and in consultations with the European Commission and the Council of Europe. She has also advised on high-profile First Amendment litigation, including proceedings against the Trump administration, through collaboration with the Government Accountability Project in Washington, D.C. In the UK context, she was part of the Expert Group advising the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Whistleblowing, contributing to the drafting of the House of Lords Bill sponsored by Baroness Susan Kramer.

Vigjilenca teaches across a wide range of subjects, including data protection, algorithmic transparency, and cybersecurity. She has been a Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore, the University of Tokyo, and the South East European University. She has delivered over 60 invited lectures globally, including at Harvard Law School, LSE, Sciences Po Paris, Bocconi University, FGV Brazil, and NYU Abu Dhabi, as well as distinguished Jean Monnet Lectures at the University of Bologna and the University of Salamanca.

She is Co-Founder and Executive Director of the European Whistleblowing Institute and Co-Founder of Stella, a mentorship initiative supporting girls and women in higher education in the Western Balkans, which was nominated for the Simone Veil Prize of the French Republic.

Her scholarship and civic leadership have received wide recognition, including her selection as one of 36 European leaders by the Obama Foundation in 2024 and the Early Career Award from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2020.

Vigjilenca currently has capacity to take on PhD supervisions. 

Research interests 

• Law and Technology: Data protection, algorithmic transparency, and the legal implications of digital infrastructures.
• EU Law and Governance: Transparency, accountability, and the role of civil society in shaping and enforcing EU legal frameworks.
• Whistleblower Protection: Normative and institutional frameworks for whistleblowing, including comparative approaches and policy reform.

Selected publications 

Books

Official secrets and oversight in the EU: Law and practices of classified information. (OUP, 2019, Oxford Studies in European Law)

The Contestation of Expertise in the European Union. (eds. Abazi, V., Adriaensen, J., & Christiansen, T, Palgrave, 2020, European Administrative Governance)

Article-by-Article Commentary: EU Whistleblower Directive (Edward Elgar Publishing, forthcoming)

Foreign Policy Secrets in the Age of Transparency (OUP, forthcoming, eds. V. Abazi & G. Rosen).

Peer-reviewed articles

Whistleblowing In the European Union. (2021) 58 (3) Common Market Law Review 813-850.

The European Union Whistleblower Directive: A 'Game Changer' for Whistleblowing Protection? (2020) 49(4) Industrial Law Journal 640-656.

Closed evidence in EU courts: Security, secrets and access to justice (2018) 55(3) Common Market Law Review 55(3) 753-782, with C. Eckes.

European Parliamentary oversight behind closed doors (2016) 5(1) Cambridge Journal of International and Comparative Law 31-49.

Policy Reports

European Trade Union Confederation: Strategic Litigation Guide for Trade Unions and Workers' Rights, October 2024

Council of Europe: Protection of Whistleblowers: Challenges and opportunities for the local and regional level’, April 2019

European Parliament: ‘Legal Analysis on the Competences of the European Union for legislation on whistleblower protection’, May 2017