On her first day at the University of Pretoria (UP) on 1 April 1999, Professor Caroline Nicholson was accompanied to her office by Dean of the Faculty of Law at the time, the late Prof Duard Kleyn, where they discovered that the office hadn’t been cleaned yet.

“He was so embarrassed and upset,” Prof Nicholson recalls. “He suggested that someone come to clean up. I told him I had some cleaning stuff with me and could quickly clean up. He said, ‘No, you will not.’ I sat in the office for a while, waiting for the person to come to do the cleaning; then I thought, ‘Well, this is silly. I’m wasting time. I should go down to the Administration Building to sort out my access card and so on.’ On my way out of the building, I bumped into Prof Kleyn, who asked me where I was going. I said that I was so disappointed that my office wasn’t ready, I’d decided to leave. With it being April Fool’s Day, I assumed he knew I was joking, but he looked at me in horror, thinking I was being serious. That was my first day at UP.”

It was the start of a career at UP that would span more than two decades, taking Prof Nicholson from lecturer to professor, department head and eventually to one of the most influential leadership roles at the university – registrar.

Before taking up the position of UP Registrar, she was Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of the Free State (UFS) and served two terms as an acting judge in the Free State Division of the High Court of South Africa. Prof Nicholson obtained BProc and LLB degrees from the University of the Witwatersrand, as well as an LLM in Banking Law and an LLD in Comparative Conflict of Laws from the University of South Africa, where she was a lecturer from 1986 to 1999 before joining UP.

“I’d decided that my career would be an academic career rather than a practice-based one,” she says. “I made that decision mainly because I wanted to have a family, and practice is a difficult environment for raising a family. So my move to academia was definitely planned, and once I went into it, it became a matter of figuring out which steps I needed to take to progress.”

It was this intentional approach that informed how Prof Nicholson taught, what her research areas would focus on and her eventual transition to leadership. Her areas of speciality are legal education and child law.

“I was passionate as an academic,” she says. “Although I taught first-year and final-year LLB classes, as well as postgraduate programmes, my passion was with first-years, because I believe that’s where the difference is made – you create passion in the student in their first year at university.”

Her focus on child law emerged from an interest in private international law. Initially, she’d planned to pursue banking law, but soon discovered that negotiable instruments “bored me to tears”. When she came across draft legislation on international parental kidnapping, it piqued her curiosity.

“At the time, there was a draft document on regulating international parental kidnapping, and I started reading up on it and became very engaged with the topic,” she recalls. “I spoke to my supervisor and said this is what I want to do. I then got involved in a lot of research around it prior to the legislation being implemented, which was an opportunity to have some input, particularly through the Office of the Family Advocate, in helping to shape the country’s draft legislation before it came into effect.”

Contributing to national policy on such a critical issue remains a highlight for Prof Nicholson. For her, law as an academic discipline must never lose sight of its real-world purpose; research and teaching should connect directly to how law is practised and experienced in society.

Another highlight was becoming Head of UP’s then Department of Legal History, Comparative Law and Legal Philosophy, now the Department of Jurisprudence. She was the first woman to lead that department, and by her recollection, the first woman to head any department in the Faculty of Law at the time. That experience, she says, and her tenure as Dean at UFS prepared her for the Registrar’s office. As Registrar, Prof Nicholson’s work has been anchored in governance and compliance, which she believes are the foundation of any institution.

“The registrar forms part of what’s referred to as the triumvirate at a university: the vice-chancellor, the chair of council and the registrar. Those three offices have to work in sync to ensure that governance is right.”

Under her watch, UP saw significant structural milestones, including the establishment of an internal legal department, the creation of a deputy registrar post and the operationalisation of the Transformation Office.

While her professional path was carefully planned, Prof Nicholson’s home life was grounded in partnership and mutual support.

“I’ve been married to my husband for 40 years, and we’ve always been extremely supportive of each other’s careers. In the earlier days of our careers, we used to take turns to advance. If I was studying for my board exams, for example, then he would take care of everything else. When he wanted to do something, I’d take a break from my career advancement. Having a supportive partner can make a huge difference.”

Prof Nicholson’s family’s ties to UP run deep. Two of her three daughters studied at the University – one in education and the other in veterinary science – while the eldest, who obtained a PhD at the University of Cape Town, pursued a career in the sciences.

“My children are my pride and joy,” says Prof Nicholson, who is also a grandmother of three.

Outside of work, Prof Nicholson enjoys endurance riding and working with stained glass, a craft she learned from her father. As she retires from UP, she’s far from slowing down.

“This is going to be a reset. I’m not planning on not working.”

Her next venture is already taking shape: a business offering mediation, arbitration, facilitation and advisory services – what she calls “legal-adjacent work”. If invited back, she might also return for another acting term in the high court before fully launching her practice.

After more than four decades of teaching, leadership and service, Prof Nicholson leaves behind an enduring imprint on the University she has called home for much of her career.

“The UP that I joined in 1999 is very different to the UP I left in 2025. I’d like to think that in some small way, I’ve contributed to that.”