We propose a spectral learning approach to shape segmentation. The method is composed of a constrained spectral clustering algorithm that is used to supervise the segmentation of a shape from a training data set, followed by a probabilistic label transfer algorithm that is used to match two shapes and to transfer cluster labels from a training-shape to a test-shape. The novelty resides both in the use of the Laplacian embedding to propagate must-link and cannot-link constraints, and in the segmentation algorithm which is based on a learn, align, transfer, and classify paradigm. We compare the results obtained with our method with other constrained spectral clustering methods and we assess its performance based on ground-truth data. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.