Zhang Jingjing

Zhang Jingjing is a prominent Chinese environmental lawyer, a lecturer in law at University of Maryland Law School, and Director of the Center for Transnational Environmental Accountability (CTEA). Through her work as the inaugural litigation director with the Beijing-based Center for Legal Assistance to Pollution Victims (CLAPV) between 1999 and 2008, Zhang won several milestone environmental litigation cases in the Chinese courts and was called by the media “China’s Erin Brockovich.” She was selected as a Yale World Fellow in 2008, won the SEE-TNC Eco-award and the Women of Courage Award given by the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in 2011. Her work has been featured prominently in the New York Times and Newsweek, and she was featured in a number of documentaries. She also worked for Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) China Program and served as the deputy China Country Director of PILnet, an NGO promoting public interest lawyering globally. Zhang was awarded the prestigious Open Society Fellowship in 2016, and has been working on monitoring China’s global environmental footprint and investigated Chinese companies’ environmental performances in Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asian. She has been trying various legal strategies to ensure Chinese overseas companies’ compliance with environmental laws and international human rights standards.

Zhang earned a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, a Master of Laws from China University of Political Science and Law, a Bachelor of Laws from Wuhan University. She was a visiting scholar at Yale Law School in 2009 and Harvard Law School East Asian Studies Program in 2013 and 2014.

Contact info:  j.zhang@law.umaryland.edu; zhjjzh@gmail.com