The NCLC PhD graduate training in Law and Regulation offers students from China and abroad an interdisciplinary and comparative socio-legal training enabling them to independently study the formation and functioning of law and regulation in China. Students will become part of UvA's PhD Graduate Programme within the Amsterdam Law School, studying general courses in legal theory and research methodology. Within the centre, PhD students will further specialize by studying regulatory theory and social-science research methods, which they will apply during fieldwork in China.

The centre aims to train a new generation of scholars who combine the best methodological and theoretical backgrounds with an in-depth knowledge of law and regulation in China. These students will offer innovative analyses on how law and regulation function in the world's largest legal system, and how such functioning can be improved. They will be able to combine legal reasoning with empirical data, and through comparative knowledge be able to understand what issues are unique to China and which may have common origins and possibly common solutions.