Friday 16 December 2016 3:54pm
The number of female Professors in the Faculty of Law has doubled after the latest round of academic promotions. Seventeen leading academics from across the University of Otago’s Dunedin, Christchurch, and Wellington campuses are being promoted to full professor, including Margaret Briggs and Shelley Griffiths from the Faculty of Law.
Announcing the new professorships, Vice-Chancellor Professor Harlene Hayne warmly congratulated the 17 academics.
“Otago’s promotion processes are extremely rigorous and involve thorough evaluation of an academic’s record of contributions in research, teaching, and service to the University and community. These professorial appointments are well-earned and reflect proven records of excellence.”
The selection procedure includes advice from international experts in evaluating the candidates’ research contributions.
Other promotions in the faculty include Barry Allan, who has been promoted to Associate Professor and Marcelo Rodriguez Ferrere who has been promted to Senior Lecturer. The promotions take effect from 1 February 2017.
Margaret Briggs
Margaret Briggs researches in criminal law and relationship property law, and publishes nationally and internationally in both fields. Her current criminal law research focuses on the boundaries of criminal responsibility, with emphasis on the potential for the law to overreach its justifiable limits. This has included studies on the principles underpinning the law of criminal attempt, errors of law induced by government officials, and the uncertain borderlines between some forms of property crime and civil wrongdoing. Margaret’s research in the field of relationship property law has analysed multiple aspects of the Property (Relationships) Act 1976, which is the legislation that governs the division of a couple’s property on separation or death. Her relationship property law studies have included the way property is classified for the purposes of the Act, the property rights of unmarried couples, and the efficacy of the contracting out provisions in the Act.
Shelley Griffiths
Shelley Griffiths’ research is in two distinct areas of law: taxation and the regulation of markets for financial products, such as shares and bonds. Her taxation research is principally about the characterisation of tax as public law. This involves the consideration of the applicability of human rights norms, such as the right to be free from search and seizure and the right of access to the Courts, to the administration of taxation where different values appear to dominate. She has also written about the absence of a comprehensive capital gains tax in New Zealand and the historical antecedents of that policy choice. Her capital market research is principally about the disclosure of information as a means of reducing asymmetry between investors and product providers. Most recently, Shelley has been working on projects that consider the implications of the major re-write of financial market law in the form of the Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013.
