Dr Zinian Zhang

Dr Zinian Zhang is senior lecturer in corporate and financial law at the University of Kent. Before joining Kent in April 2026, he was senior lecturer in commercial law at the University of Glasgow (2022-2026). Between 2016 and 2022, he taught law as lecturer in business law at the University of Leeds. Dr Zhang practised law in the People’s Republic of China from 1999 to 2008.

Dr Zhang earned his PhD in law at the University of Durham (2009-2014), supervised by the late Professor Roman Tomasic. After his PhD studies, he was given a post-doctoral fellowship at Singapore Management University School of Law, Singapore, from 2014 to 2015.

He is now the coordinator of the research group on law and economics at Kent Law School and is also the convenor of the commercial law pathway.

Dr Zhang is a long-term academic member of INSOL International, sitting at its exam board for its Global Insolvency Certificate Programme. 

Dr Zhang is currently investigating the insolvency of financial institutions. And he is on the trilogy research journey in empirically examining the insolvency of three types of financial firms: investment banks, traditional deposit-taking banks and insurance companies.     

Dr Zhang has taught a wide range of commercial law related modules/courses, including company law, corporate insolvency, corporate governance, international financial law, commercial law, business organisation, and securities law at both UG and PGT levels.

Dr Zhang also has a decade of experience in teaching law for non-law students (MSc in Leeds and Space Engineering students in Glasgow).

He is currently teaching the following modules at Kent:

World Trade Organization Law and Practice (LAWS8470)

Banking Law (LAWS6650)

Banking Law (LAWS9300)

A PGT module of corporate insolvency law is expected to be opened at Kent from the 2026-2027 academic year onwards. 

Dr Zhang has supervised over ten PhD students, most of them having successfully completed and having secured full-time positions in high education institutions either in the UK or abroad, with some entering into the financial industries as economists.

He has examined over thirty PhD theses as either internal or external examiner. 

Dr Zhang has been appointed as permanent reviewer at the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland and is also an external reviewer for the Hong Kong University Grants Committee (UGC).

Dr Zhang regularly advises IMF and World Bank on global insolvency law reform projects; domestically, he collaborates with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) on financial institution insolvency research.