We are delighted to announce that Professor Helen Scott will join the Faculty of Law in October 2022 as the Regius Professor of Civil Law. The Regius Professorship of Civil Law was founded by Henry VIII in 1540 and was the University of Cambridge’s first Chair in Law. The Chair is currently held by Professor David Ibbetson, who will retire in September 2022; other recent holders of the Chair include Professor Peter Stein and Professor David Johnston.
Professor Scott’s research interests lie at the intersection of civilian legal history (in particular, Roman Law) and the law of obligations (especially tort and unjust enrichment). Among her numerous publications in these areas, she is the author of Unjust Enrichment in South African Law: Rethinking Enrichment by Transfer (Hart Publishing 2013) and the co-editor of Iniuria and the Common Law (Hart Publishing 2013) (with Eric Descheemaeker) and Private Law in a Changing World (Juta 2019) (with Anton Fagan).
Professor Scott holds degrees from the University of Cape Town and the University of Oxford. She is currently Professor of Private Law at the University of Oxford, where she is also Vice-Dean (Personnel) of the Faculty of Law, and a Tutorial Fellow in Law at Lady Margaret Hall. Before taking up her current role at Oxford, Professor Scott was a Professor in the Department of Private Law at the University of Cape Town. From 2008 to 2014, she held a Visiting Professorship at the Université Panthéon-Assas (Paris II), where she taught the common law of tort.
Commenting on Professor Scott’s appointment, Professor Mark Elliott, the Chair of the Faculty of Law, said: "I am delighted that Professor Scott will be joining the Faculty of Law as our new Regius Professor of Civil Law. We greatly look forward to welcoming Professor Scott to Cambridge and to benefitting from her wealth of expertise and experience as a teacher, researcher and academic leader."
Professor Scott commented: "I am honoured to be elected and look forward very much to joining the Cambridge Law Faculty and working with my new colleagues to build Civil Law at Cambridge and beyond."