Secretary, Treasurer and Webmaster

Jennifer Walsh - Secretary

Jennifer is the senior solicitor at Youthlaw Aotearoa. Jennifer is a qualified lawyer and holds a master of laws specializing in public law. Jennifer practised litigation for a number of years and appeared in the high court, court of appeal and supreme court. She has developed specialty expertise in human rights relating to education law and special educational rights. In particular, she was counsel instructed in the A v Hutchison & Anors (Green Bay) case head in the Auckland high court in 2014.  She undertakes law reform, media work, has been published in international journals and authored the 2016 report Barriers to Education in New Zealand which highlighted and raised awareness of the rise of informal removals of students in schools. 

Nicky Taylor - Treasurer
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Associate Professor Nicola Taylor is the Director of the Children’s Issues Centre at the University of Otago. She also holds the Alexander McMillan Chair in Childhood Studies and works closely with the Faculty of Law. Nicola has a BSW (Hons) and LLB (Hons) degrees and a PhD. Nicola has a particular interest in socio-legal research with children, parents and professionals on private law issues involving children’s post-separation care arrangements, relocation, international child abduction, children’s views and participation, child-inclusive practice, family dispute resolution and relationship property division. She is currently involved in co-leading major research projects i) within New Zealand to evaluate the 2014 family law reforms (funded by the New Zealand Law Foundation, 2017-2019); and ii) internationally on the child objections exception to return in 1980 Hague Convention proceedings (funded by the British Academy, London, 2017-2018). 

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The role of Webmaster is being filled by Velda Chan who will be keeping the ACYA website up to date with items of interest and news of our activities.