Rate My Professor Anna High

Professor Anna High is a Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago. She holds a BA and LLB from the University of Queensland, and BCL, MPhil, and DPhil from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Rhodes Scholar (Queensland and Magdalen College, 2008). Following her doctorate, she served as Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence and American Council of Learned Societies Postdoctoral Fellow at Loyola University Chicago School of Law, teaching criminal law and Chinese law. She also taught as Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University Law School in comparative human rights, Asian law, EU law, and criminal law. Since joining the University of Otago in late 2017, she has progressed to Professor, teaching Evidence Law, Jurisprudence, Chinese Law, and Gender and the Law. She is Co-Director of the Otago Centre for Law and Society, Convener of Students in the Faculty of Law, and a regular faculty member at Te Kura Kaiwhakawā Institute of Judicial Studies. Additionally, she is a member of the New Zealand Law Commission's Expert Advisory Group for the third review of the Evidence Act 2006.

Professor High is a socio-legal scholar employing a “law in action” approach to feminist theory and sexual violence, evidence law, Chinese law, and legal education. Her monograph, Non-governmental Orphan Relief in China: Law, Policy, and Practice (Routledge, 2019), received the 2020 Asian Law and Society Association Distinguished Book Award. Other key publications include “Sexual Dignity and Rape Law” (Yale Journal of Law & Feminism, 2022), “Reluctant Consent” (New Zealand Law Journal, 2022), and “The ‘Any Evidence’ Rule in New Zealand Family Law” (with Caroline Hickman, New Zealand Universities Law Review, 2020), the latter earning the New Zealand Law Foundation Sir Ian Barker Published Article Award. She holds a Royal Society Marsden Fund grant on sexual dignity, consent, and sexual violence law. Her awards include the 2024 Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Medal, 2022 Royal Society Te Apārangi Early Career Research Excellence Award for Humanities, and 2023 Te Whatu Kairangi Aotearoa Tertiary Education Award. She co-founded the Aotearoa New Zealand chapter of the Mindfulness in Law Society and delivered her Inaugural Professorial Lecture titled “Dignity and Law.”