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Ville Erkkilä (PhD) is a university researcher and team leader at the Research Council of Finland Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity, and the European Narratives at the University of Helsinki. He is a legal historian specializing in law and legality in European dictatorships. His research examines the degradation of rule-of-law structures, societies that uphold the facade of legality, and the historical consolidation of fundamental rule-of-law institutions.

Erkkilä’s current research project focuses on the history of the experience of injustice in rural Eastern Europe. Using a comparative, long-term approach, it engages with broader themes of evolving rural conceptions of property, legality, and identity, as well as contemporary issues concerning the adaptation to and normalization of authoritarian legal and governance practices.

Previously, Erkkilä has studied socialism and legal history (2020) and the conceptual history of law (2023). His dissertation (2019) examined German legal history from the rise of the Third Reich to the 1968 student protests through the work of renowned German legal historian Franz Wieacker. His research has been published in journals such as Law and History Review, Rethinking History, History of European Ideas, and Law and Critique.