Demystifying Oxford: Academic Hiring at the Faculty of Law

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Demystifying Oxford: Academic Hiring at the Faculty of Law

With the goal of broadening the pool of candidates who apply for four upcoming Associate Professorships that will be advertised on our vacancies page in February/March 2021, the Faculty of Law at the University of Oxford invites academics working in any area of law to attend this information session. We aim to demystify our recruitment process, explain the academic role at Oxford, including our tutorial system and the relationship between the Faculty and the colleges, and answer questions from participants. Any legal scholar working anywhere in the world is welcome to register for the session. We particularly welcome participation from women and members of black and Asian minority ethnic groups, who are underrepresented at Oxford. 

the event speakers (l-R): Eusebius McKaiser, Tarun Khaitan, Nicola Trott, Charlotte Vinnicombe, Kristin Van Zweiten

About the Speakers

Moderator:

Eusebius McKaiser, Broadcaster, Author, Political Analyst, Debate and Public Speaking Coach, Lecturer

Eusebius grew up in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. He initially wanted to be a lawyer but was deeply drawn to the normative questions of philosophy, especially moral philosophy, and so he ended up doing graduate research at Rhodes University and later, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Oxford University. He has settled in Johannesburg where his other passions, politics, current affairs and debate, has led to a career in broadcasting, writing and political analysis.

Panellists:

Professor Tarun Khaitan is the Vice Dean of the Faculty of Law, Oxford

Prof Tarun Khaitan is the Vice Dean (Recruitment and Teaching) at the Faculty of Law, Oxford. He is also a Professor and Future Fellow at the Melbourne Law School. Tarun grew up in a small town in India, and came to Oxford as a graduate student on the Rhodes Scholarship in 2004. His academic work includes a highly commended monograph titled A Theory of Discrimination Law (OUP 2015). Winner of the prestigious Letten Prize in 2018, alongside several other awards, his work has been cited by the Indian Supreme Court, the Canadian Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights. He is currently working on democracy and constitutional design, with a special focus on non-judicial actors such as political parties and fourth branch institutions. From 1 July 2021, he will step down from his current role as Vice Dean to become the Head of Research at the Bonavero Institute of Human Rights at Oxford.

Dr Nicola Trott is the Senior Tutor & Tutor for Graduates at Balliol College, Oxford. These are academic administrative positions.

Nicky grew up and went to school in what was then rural Buckinghamshire, in Washington D.C. and Maryland in the US, and, back in the UK, in Derbyshire.

She took up her current role as a ‘returner’ to Oxford, having studied there, as an undergraduate and graduate, before working successively in the University of London and in Glasgow University, where she was a Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of English Literature. In her academic career she has specialised in British romantic poetry and nineteenth-century fiction, and taught literature written in English from the eighteenth century onwards.

Charlotte Vinnicombe is the Head of Administration and Finance at the Faculty of Law, Oxford

As the senior administrator, she supports the governance and management of the Faculty, and works closely with the Vice Deans and the Dean on academic recruitment, as well as the support of academic, research and support staff.  

She has held this role since 2012, and before that was the Faculty Administrator in Oriental Studies (and for a short time concurrently in Theology).  Prior to working in the University, she was the Tutorial Secretary at St Hilda’s College, and then the Academic Administrator at St Catherine’s College, Oxford.  She was born in Newark, Nottinghamshire, attended the local comprehensive school, and then studied at Liverpool University, leaving with a BA in English Language and Literature and a Masters in Victorian Literature. 

Professor Kristin Van Zweiten is the Incoming Associate Dean of Equality and Diversity at the Faculty of Law, Oxford

Kristin van Zwieten is Clifford Chance Associate Professor of Law and Finance in the Law Faculty and Gullifer Fellow in Law at Harris Manchester College. She grew up in Western Sydney, Australia, and qualified as a solicitor in NSW before coming to Oxford as a Menzies Scholar to study for the BCL and MPhil in Law. She stayed on for the DPhil as a Clarendon scholar, and then went to Cambridge for her first academic post before returning to take up her present position at Oxford. Much of Kristin’s research is in the area of corporate insolvency law. She is the current editor of Goode on Principles of Corporate Insolvency Law, and an editor and co-author of Bork and van Zwieten’s Commentary on the European Insolvency Regulation. She has also worked extensively on Indian corporate insolvency law (the subject of her doctoral thesis), and her work in this area has been cited in various policy debates on Indian insolvency law reform. She is currently working on the treatment of COVID-19 related insolvency in a project (“COVID-19, public policy and commercial law”) with Horst Eidenmueller (Oxford Law) and Oren Sussman (Said Business School). Kristin is a co-founder and academic editor of the Oxford Business Law Blog, and the present director of the Commercial Law Centre at Harris Manchester College. She is a Research Member of the ECGI.