• Vita

    Eva Kocher has been a professor of civil and labour law at the Faculty of Law at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany, since 2009. After studying in Tübingen and Hamburg, she completed her legal education by passing the second state examination in Hamburg in 1996. Her PhD (1994) analysed German legislation on the co-determination of works councils in matters of organisational restructuring. Her habilitation thesis (2004) compared German and English civil procedure in consumer law matters.

    Her research – situated at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Labour Law Research (C*LLaS) – is characterised by interdisciplinary and feminist approaches. In recent years, she has focused on legal issues relating to collective labour law, anti-discrimination law, digital labour platforms, social standards and supply chain regulation, and care work in labour law. She has a particular interest in questions of methodology. Mentoring young career scholars and supervising PhD students are central to her approach to academic work.

    She has held various administrative roles at her university, including dean, vice-president for studies and teaching, and acting president, and sits on the law review board of the German Research Foundation (DFG). She is also the chair of the 'Gesellschaft für Recht und Gesellschaft' (German Law and Society Association).

  • Forschungsprojekt

    Anti-discrimination law as critique of routines of normality

    The standard employment relationship — defined as a permanent, full-time position within a single organisation — is a normative concept that shaped labour law during the Fordist era, and continues to do so to this day. In fact, this concept renders invisible and marginalises (others) the private care work performed within families and communities. At the same time, labour law has also provided instruments designed to counteract some of the notions of normality represented by the standard employment relationship. For example, there are rights that are supposed to enable the compatibility of family and professional work, such as the right to flexible working hours.

    However, those who exercise such rights are often viewed as outsiders or troublemakers by employers, colleagues, and employee representatives. This project analyses how the subjectivity engendered by these rights contributes to the marginalisation of private care work in employment. It discusses how open-ended search processes could contribute to the internalisation of social diversity in labour law.

    In doing so, the project brings together three strands of legal scholarship: anti-discrimination law concepts; legal critique; and labour law collectivity and individual rights.

  • Einschlägige Veröffentlichungen

    Eva Kocher, „Digital Work Platforms. At the Interface of Labour Law“ (Bloomsbury Publishing 2022) (open access).

    Eva Kocher, “Das Andere des Arbeitsrechts. Perspektiven feministischen Rechtsdenkens“ (Velbrück Wissenschaft 2024) (open access).

    Eva Kocher, “Interdisciplinary Labour Law Studies: From Critical Legal Studies to the Sociology of Law and Back Again”, in: Christian Boulanger/Naomi Creutzfeldt/Jennifer Hendry (ed.), Socio-Legal Trajectories Across Europe: Comparative Perspectives (Hart Publishing 2025), p. 119-134.

    Eva Kocher and Joanna Bronowicka, „Kampf und Offenheit – Wie muss eine Gewerkschaft organisiert sein?“, Kritische Justiz (KJ) 57 (2024), p. 504-521.

    Eva Kocher, “§ 5 Arbeitsrechtlicher Diskriminierungsschutz”, in: Europäisches Arbeits- und Sozialrecht, Band 7 der Enzyklopädie Europarecht (ed. Monika Schlachter and Hans Michael Heinig) (2nd ed. Nomos 2021), p. 229-322.

    Eva Kocher, “Codes of Conduct and Framework Agreements on Social Minimum Standards – Private Regulation?”, in : Responsible Business, Self-Governance and the Law in Transnational Economic Transactions (ed. Olaf Dilling, Martin Herberg and Gerd Winter) (Hart Publishing 2007), p. 67–86.