Professor Jessica Palmer has been appointed Dean of the University of Otago Faculty of Law.

She succeeds Professor Mark Henaghan, who stepped down from the role of Dean on 6 April after 19 years.

Professor Palmer holds BCom, LLB(Hons) and LLM degrees from the University of Auckland and an LLM from Cambridge University in England. She joined the Otago University Law Faculty in 2005. Before that she worked at a large commercial law firm and as a Judges' Clerk at the Auckland High Court.

She won the Law Foundation's Ethel Benjamin Prize in 2004 and completed an LLM at Cambridge as a result. In 2015 she won the University of Otago Rowheath Trust Award and Carl Smith Medal for outstanding scholarly research achievement across all disciplines. Her research interests include the law of obligations, restitution, equity and commercial law.

Professor Henaghan has been with the Otago faculty for 41 years, and will remain at Otago as a researcher and lecturer until the end of the year when he will take up a new professorship at the University of Auckland Law School.