UoA law lecturers switch to AUT
Criminal law and youth justice expert Khylee Quince. Photo: Supplied.
Last year four highly regarded lecturers from the University of Auckland’s Law School moved to AUT and several Auckland Uni students followed their lead.
According to Professor Charles Rickett, the Dean of Law at AUT, the new staff members boosted the calibre of the faculty, particularly within the criminal law field.
Professor Rickett says this criminal expertise is what attracted some UoA students to move across the road to AUT. “A number of students from Auckland thought they weren’t getting adequate coverage of criminal law and a number of them started to come over here.”
Professor Rickett says the new lecturers enabled the school to reopen the LLM (Master of Laws Programme) with a criminal law specialisation.
“We have probably got the best criminal law academics in New Zealand – or at least the strongest complement of criminal law lecturers in New Zealand – which means that we are enabled to create a focus in our teaching and research on criminal research. It’s not our only focus, but a focus.”
The new lecturers include criminal law specialist Professor Warren Brookbanks (who co-authored New Zealand’s main criminal law textbook), criminal and human rights expert Professor Kris Gledhill, children’s rights and youth law specialist Alison Cleland, and criminal law and youth justice expert Khylee Quince (of Te Roroa/Ngā Puhi and Ngāti Porou iwi).
As to why the lecturers moved, Professor Rickett says money had nothing to do with it.
“The salaries for law staff are pretty much the same as they get anywhere.
“I don’t attract these people by paying them more. I don’t attract them by doing anything other than offering them largely a fulfilling environment in which to work.”
One of the professors, Kris Gledhill, says AUT’s culture is what attracted him to make the change.
"I moved universities because I formed the very clear impression that I would find much more encouragement to develop new ideas at AUT."
Senior lecturer Khylee Quince says she was partly inspired to move to AUT to help develop South Campus’s law programme.
“The move to AUT presents an exciting opportunity to be involved with developing a legal education programme at the South Campus, particularly in terms of equality of access for Māori and Pasifika students.”
The ex-UoA lecturers, alongside other new and old staff members at the Law School, helped create two new initiatives within the faculty, which are the Centre for Non-Adversarial