Elsabe Schoeman is a professor  in and Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Pretoria since 1 November 2019. She holds the degrees BLC (UP) LLB  LLD (Unisa). The title of her LLD thesis is “Domicile and Jurisdiction as Criteria in External Conflict of Laws”. She is an admitted Advocate of the High Court of South Africa.

Academic & professional experience

Professor Elsabe Schoeman joined the University of Pretoria in 2016. On 1 November 2019 she was appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Law for the term 1 November 2019 to 31 October 2023.  Notably is the fact that Professor Schoeman is the first woman to be appointed as Dean of the Faculty of Law after more than a century of its existence, marking her appointment as a significant milestone for the Faculty.  

Previously, Professor Schoeman was an associate professor in the Law School at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) for fourteen years, where she served as Deputy Dean of the Law School and Deputy Director of the cross-faculty Europe Institute.

Before taking up her academic position at the University of Auckland in 2002, she spent a year at the Institut für internationales und ausländisches Privatrecht (University of Cologne) as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow.

Prior to that she was a professor in the Department of Jurisprudence at the University of South Africa.

Her main areas of research are jurisdiction in cross-border civil and commercial litigation and choice of law in contract, delict/tort and selected areas of family law. She has made contributions to international legal encyclopedias in her areas of interest, as well as submissions to law commissions (in South Africa and New Zealand) and she regularly advises law firms on transnational litigation in South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany.

Areas of specialisation

Her main areas of specialisation and current research focus are transnational personal injury litigation and the human rights dimension in cross-border litigation.

Academic and professional memberships

  1. Associate member of the International Academy of Comparative Law
  2. Member of the Southern African Society of Legal Historians
  3. Member of the Association of Attenders and Alumni of The Hague Academy of International Law
  4. Member of the Alexander von Humboldt Association (SA)

Register for the session on 28 August 2020 @ 13h00