David Garciandía Igal

Dr David Garciandía Igal is a College Lecturer in EU law at Oriel College, where he has been teaching since 2023. He has also taught EU law at Hertford College (Oxford), Somerville College (Oxford), and SOAS University of London. 

He obtained a DPhil (PhD) in Law from the University of Oxford in 2025. The thesis received the highest distinction (accepted without corrections) and was awarded the second prize (proxime accessit) for the Best Doctoral Thesis in European Law by ELFA (European Law Faculties Association). His doctoral research, funded by the Government of Navarre, explored the EU’s imprint on human rights law and policy in China, developing a theory that explains how and why this process of influence occurs within a legal system as seemingly closed as China’s, and in an area as sensitive as human rights. It is now under contract with Cambridge University Press and expected to be published as a stand-alone book in 2027. 

David also holds an MPhil in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge (Ramón Areces scholarship) and a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the Public University of Navarre, where he received the Extraordinary Prize for the top GPA of the Faculty of Law. He spent six months at Shijiazhuang Tiedao University (China), and his final law dissertation on freedom of religion in China won the 2020 Jaime Brunet University Student Prize for the Promotion of Human Rights.

His main research interests cover EU law, comparative law, international law and international relations, with human rights and China as underlying themes. He has several publications on these topics, including several peer-reviewed articles and a book with Brazilian Judge Aloisio C. dos Santos Jr. on the corporate duty of reasonable accommodation of religious beliefs in the workplace.

He is a founder and former president of the Oxford University Spanish Society, a former convenor of the Oxford EU Law Discussion Group and a former DPhil associate at the Oxford China Centre. Additionally, he has been the research assistant to the UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and has worked for the Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations in Vienna and for different private companies (Siemens Gamesa) and law firms (Garrigues).