Alexandra Kaiser

 

Alexandra obtained her doctorate in China Regional Studies and Law from the University of Cologne in 2021. Alexandra has several years of experience in academia and has studied and researched at Tamkang University in Taipei, the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in Beijing, Nanjing University, the Human Rights Center of Central South University in Changsha and King’s College London. Her research was funded by Academia Sinica and the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy, among others.

Before joining the Chair in Human Rights Law at FAU in March 2024, Alexandra worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institutum Iurisprudentiae, Academia Sinica in Taipei. Previously, Alexandra worked as a research associate at the Chair of Chinese Legal Culture at the University of Cologne (2017-2020) and as a
postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Human Rights Politics (Prof. Dr. Katrin Kinzelbach), where she coordinated a project on “Academic Freedom in the People’s Republic of China” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (2021-2024).

Alexandra’s research interests include the interplay between official discourses and legal reforms, as well as the engagement of academia with such discourses in the authoritarian party state. She is interested in the illiberal shifts in the legal system and the re-ideologisation under Xi Jinping, and the promotion and codification of specifically Chinese values, against the background of the party’s stated goal of promoting a ‘socialist rule-of-law
state’. Alexandra examines specific areas of law, such as criminal justice or academic freedom, and is interested in how increased repression has affected domestic scholarship and the transnational implications of these domestic developments.