UCL Laws welcomes new academic, teaching and research staff

Academic and teaching staff

Tommaso Fia, Lecturer in Data Law and Governance

Tommaso Fia's research spans data law and governance, European private law, trade secrecy, and the commons. Before joining UCL, he was a Post-doctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Law of the University of Tübingen and a Doctoral Researcher at the European University Institute (EUI), where he obtained his PhD and coordinated the Information Society (InfoSoc) Working Group. Before entering academia, Tommaso worked at an international law firm in Milan and later provided consultancy services in the field of data protection and governance.

Eva Fischer, DAAD Lecturer (Teaching) in Law

Eva Fischer’s research interests lie primarily in European law, competition law and torts, and she will teach European Legal Studies I and II on the LLB. She is partially funded by the German government (DAAD Lecturer). Before joining UCL Eva was a PhD candidate and assistant at LMU Munich and worked with an international law firm and the European Commission. She organises the Early Career Scholars Conference in Competition Law and is an incoming Editor of the Kluwer Competition Law Blog.

Dr Philip Gavin, Lecturer in Law

Dr Philip Gavin’s research focuses on the duties of directors and business judgment, and explores corporate governance in insolvent and pre-insolvent companies. He also examines equitable remedies in commercial contexts. Dr Gavin is the co-author of Equity and the Law of Trusts in Ireland, and a book review editor at the Journal of Corporate Law Studies. Prior to joining UCL Laws, Dr Gavin worked at the Technological University Dublin, teaching company law and the law of equity.

Jonathan Haines, Lecturer in Law

Jonathan Haines is a lawyer and academic specialising in the law of financial markets, including digital assets, securities and derivatives, corporate finance, structured finance, secured transactions, financial collateral, insolvency and the law of trusts in financial markets. Mr Haines is a Senior Consultant and former partner at Ashurst LLP advising many leading investment banks, funds and other financial institutions on innovative and complex cross-border financing structures. Mr Haines will be teaching on the MSc Law and Finance and Master of Laws (LLM).

Dr Jeevan Hariharan, Lecturer in Law

Dr Jeevan Hariharan researches and teaches in the areas of private law, legal theory and media law, with a particular focus on tort law and privacy. He is returning to UCL Laws after three years as a Lecturer at QMUL. Before that, Jeevan completed his PhD at UCL. He also holds BA (First Class) and LLB degrees from the University of Sydney, where he was awarded the University Medal in Philosophy, and an LLM (First Class) from the University of Cambridge. In July 2025, Jeevan was awarded the Hart Publishing Prize for best paper by an early career scholar at the Obligations XI conference at Harvard Law School. His work to date has been published in leading journals including the Modern Law Review, the Cambridge Law Journal, the Journal of Media Law and the Journal of Environmental Law. Dr Hariharan is currently working into a monograph titled Physical Privacy (under contract with Hart).

Jo Helme, Lecturer (Teaching) in EU Law

Prior to joining UCL, Jo Helme taught employment law and constitutional law at Oxford. She held the Judge Meron Scholarship for her PhD research into EU labour law, specifically on the humanisation of work and algorithmic time. Jo was commissioned by the European Parliament in the drafting of the Internship Directive and undertakes consultancy work for the ILO and World Bank. She has held various visiting researcher posts, received three awards for her PhD research, co-authored a book, and published several other works.  

Professor Nick Hopkins, Professor of Land Law

From 2015–2025 Professor Nick Hopkins was Law Commissioner for England and Wales for Property, Family and Trust Law. Nick led the Law Commission's work on residential leasehold and commonhold, which was partly implemented in the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 and provides the basis of Government's Commonhold White Paper. He also led a number of other projects on land, property and related topics, including on land registration, charities, burial and cremation, wills and business tenancies, and worked on the Charities Act 2022 and the Environment Act 2021 (in respect of conservation covenants). In family law, Nick led projects on weddings, surrogacy and financial remedies on divorce and dissolution, amongst others. He co-authored the current (10th) edition of Megarry and Wade: The Law of Real Property. Prior to appointment as Commissioner, for more than 20 years Professor Hopkins held academic posts at Durham, Southampton and Reading universities.

Lauren Stanley, Lecturer (Teaching) in Health Care Law

Lauren Stanley has recently completed her PhD on bioethics governance and its legitimacy challenges. Her research interests lie primarily in bioethics governance, health care law and ethics, and the intersection between tort law and medicine. She will be part of the Tort Law teaching team on the LLB, deliver a special seminar series on ‘Bioethics, Patient Autonomy and Tort Law’, and be teaching on the Health Care Law module.

Research fellows

The following Research Fellows have joined the Global Centre for Democratic Constitutionalism (GCDC). 

Rupavardhini Balakrishnan Raju, Research Fellow (GCDC)

Rupavardhini Balakrishnan Raju is currently completing a DPhil in Law on nationalism, language, and constitutional identity at the University of Oxford. She was previously a Stipendiary Lecturer in Administrative Law at Trinity College, Oxford and has taught constitutional law and administrative law at various other colleges. She has also worked as a civil servant in the Government of India, and was the Director of the National Academy of Audit and Accounts, India, where she trained newly recruited civil servants.

Dora Devlin, Research Fellow (GCDC)

Dora Devlin recently completed her PhD in Law at the University of Cambridge on the UK's responses to adverse Strasbourg judgments. Her research interests span across constitutional law, human rights, foreign relations law and public international law, with a focus on the role of the executive. Her approach to research emphasises socio-legal and interdisciplinary approaches and academia's engagement with the outside world.

Natalia Morales Cerda, Research Fellow (GCDC)

Natalia Morales Cerda is a lawyer with an LLB and an LLM from the University of Chile, and an MA in Gender Studies from the University of Sussex. She is currently a PhD Candidate and Postgraduate Teaching Assistant at UCL Laws. She has published extensively on comparative constitutional law, constitution-making processes, and human rights in Latin America, particularly in Chile, where she has worked as a legal adviser in government and collaborated with civil society organisations on legal reform, reproductive rights, and gender equality.

Luis Soto Tamayo, Research Fellow (GCDC)

Luis Soto Tamayo's research focuses on judicial politics – currently emphasising constitutional resilience – and also examines public-sector corruption, organisational performance, and state capacity. He holds a PhD in Politics Research from the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London, supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Prior to his PhD, he worked in Mexico’s federal public sector, and in the Centre for Research and Economic Teaching (CIDE) as a research assistant.