Dr. Kena Zheng
Since June 2025: Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Civil Law, German and European Competition Law at Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf (Germany).
Working on the research project "Shaping Competition in the Digital Age" (SCiDA).
2020–2025: PhD candidate of PUBR, MCEL, and METRO at Maastricht University (Netherlands)
Defended the dissertation "The Use of Competition Soft Law in Digital Markets – A Comparative Legal Analysis of the EU and China" in June 2025, awarded cum laude; Supervised Master theses in the areas of competition law & digital regulation; Coordinated the extracurricular course on "Introduction to Chinese Law"; Guest lectured for the Master course on European Competition Law.
2020–2025: PhD Researcher at the Ius Commune Research School, jointly organized by Maastricht University, Utrecht University, University of Amsterdam, and KU Leuven.
2023: Visiting Researcher at King's College London (UK).
2018–2021: Researcher at the Research Center of Real Estate and Urban Development, Shenzhen (China).
2018: Double master's degrees in procedural law and European Business Law at Southwest University of Political Science and Law (China) and Aix-Marseille Université (France).
Areas of expertise
• Digital Regulation
• Competition Law
• Soft Law
• Law & Economics
Publications
• Antitrust in Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure – Between Regulation and Innovation in the EU, the US, and China, Computer Law & Security Review (forthcoming)
• Consultation on the 2025 Review of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) (with Oles Andriychuk, Rupprecht Podszun, Anush Ganesh, Sarah Hinck, and Jasper van den Boom), Düsseldorf and Exeter 2025
• Doctoral Thesis: The use of competition soft law in digital markets: A comparative legal analysis of China and the EU, Maastricht 2025
• Regulation of Digital Markets with Competition Soft Law: A Law and Economics Perspective (with Niels Philipsen), Journal of Competition Law & Economics, 21 (3), 433–458 (2025)
• China and EU's wisdom in choosing competition soft law or hard law in the digital era: a perfect match (with Francis Snyder), China-EU Law Journal (CELJ) 9, 25–50 (2023)