Rate My Professor Jacinta Ruru

Professor Jacinta Ruru (Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui) MNZM, FRSNZ is a Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of Otago, holding the Inaugural Sesquicentennial Distinguished Chair since 2019 and serving as the inaugural Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Māori) since March 2024. A University of Otago graduate, she joined the Faculty of Law in 1999. Her academic qualifications include a BA from Victoria University of Wellington, LLB from the University of Otago, and PhD from the University of Victoria in Canada, with postgraduate theses dedicated to Indigenous lands in national parks. Ruru's career encompasses award-winning teaching and research, including as immediate past co-director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga, New Zealand’s Māori Centre of Research Excellence, and co-director of Otago’s Poutama Ara Rau Research Theme.

Her research focuses on Tikanga Māori and Indigenous laws, encompassing Indigenous Peoples' legal rights, interests, and responsibilities for lands including national parks, waterbodies, and Māori land law under Te Ture Whenua Māori Act 1993, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. She advocates for decolonising legal education and research, legal personality for the environment, and integrating mātauranga Māori into law. With over 100 publications, key works include Discovering Indigenous Lands: The Doctrine of Discovery in the English Colonies (Oxford University Press, 2010, co-authored), Ngā Kete Mātauranga: Māori Scholars at the Research Interface (Otago University Press, 2021, co-edited), Listening to Papatūānuku: a call to reform water law (Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand, 2018), and Giving Voice to Rivers (Australian Indigenous Law Review, 2010). Awards include the Prime Minister’s Supreme Award for Excellence in Tertiary Teaching (2016), University of Otago Distinguished Research Medal (2022), Fellowship of the Royal Society Te Apārangi (2017), and Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori and the law. As Aotearoa New Zealand’s first Māori woman Professor of Law, she influences policy through roles on Te Papa Tongarewa board, Ministry for the Environment Kāhui Wai Māori, and Environmental Defence Society, and as a TEDx speaker and Fulbright scholar.