Dr Emily Henderson is a researcher, ex-practitioner, ex-MP and sixth-generation Tangata Tiriti.
After completing her PhD at Cambridge, she returned home to balance litigation practice with academic studies of the Family and criminal courts. Emily has held the NZ Law Foundation International Research Fellowship, a Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall Cambridge, inter alia.
She was instrumental in establishing Communication Assistants and the Sexual Violence Courts, co-authored, inter alia, the influential AUT child witnesses report, the Benchmark guidelines, and the Helen Clark Foundation’s report on sexual violence.
Elected Whangārei’s MP in 2020, she was Deputy Chair to the Justice and Social Services Select Committees but resigned before the next election to return to research.
Currently she is co-authoring a comparative international study on change implementation in the criminal courts with Emerita Professor Judy Cashmore, funded by the Borrin Foundation & AIJA.
She likes tea. A lot.