Professor Caroline Nicholson’s appointment as Registrar at the University of Pretoria took effect from 1 January 2018. Having dedicated her professional life to practising and teaching law, Professor Nicholson’s most recently held position was that of Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of the Free State. Prior to that, she served for a period of 15 years in various academic capacities at the University of Pretoria: senior lecturer, associate professor and professor in the Department of Legal History, Comparative Law and Legal Philosophy, later known as the Department of Jurisprudence. She also served a term as head of the department from 2003 to 2007. She joined the University of Pretoria after 12 years of service in the same academic department at the University of South Africa.

Professor Nicholson obtained her BProc and LLB degrees at the University of the Witwatersrand and completed an LLM and LLD at the University of South Africa. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Alternative Dispute Resolution and is both an admitted attorney and notary public, as well as an accredited mediator. She has served two terms as acting judge in the Free State Division of the High Court of South Africa.

She is a member of several national and international academic associations, and has served as Council member, Vice-President and President of the Society of Law Teachers of Southern Africa, and as Vice-President and President of the Southern African Society of Legal Historians.

Professor Nicholson has contributed to a number of books and has published on a wide range of topics in national and international journals. She has also presented numerous papers at conferences both in South Africa and abroad.

(Click here for the Office of the Registrar)