Eric Yan-ho Lai is the Hong Kong Law Fellow at the Georgetown Center for Asian Law. Born and raised in Hong Kong, Lai has been involved in civil society development and human rights advocacy since 2010. He received his Master’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science as a Chevening Scholar in 2013 and is currently a Ph.D. Candidate in Law at SOAS University of London. His doctoral research focuses on legal transplant, legal professionalism, and legal mobilization in authoritarian regimes. He also studies judicial politics, national security, social movement, contentious politics, and electoral integrity in Hong Kong and China.
Before joining Georgetown Law, Lai was a lecturer in Political Science at several universities in Hong Kong. He was also a visiting fellow at the Centre for Comparative and Public Law at the University of Hong Kong. He writes on law and politics, electoral integrity, judicial activism, international human rights, and religious freedom in academic journals, newspapers, and popular literature. Lai is a member of the Asian Civil Society Research Network.