Jacinta Ruru MNZM FRSNZ
Ruru in 2022
Born	1974 (age 49–50)
Alma mater	University of Victoria
Scientific career
Fields	Indigenous law
Institutions	University of Otago
Thesis	Settling Indigenous place: reconciling legal fictions in governing Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand's national parks.  (2012)
Doctoral advisor	John Borrows
Website	www.otago.ac.nz/law/staff/jacinta_ruru.html

Jacinta Arianna Ruru MNZM FRSNZ (born 1974) is a New Zealand academic and the first Māori professor of law. ^[1] Ruru is currently a professor at the University of Otago. ^[2]

Academic career

Ruru completed a Master's at the University of Otago in 2001, with a thesis on the Treaty of Waitangi and national parks in New Zealand. ^[3] After a 2012 Fulbright-funded PhD at the University of Victoria in Canada, Ruru returned to New Zealand and the University of Otago, rising to full professor in 2016. ^[4]

Ruru's research centres on indigenous peoples' (primarily Māori in New Zealand and First Nations in Canada) legal relations with land and water. ^{[5] [6]} She is the co-director of Ngā Pae o te Māramatanga (NPM) the New Zealand's Māori Centre of Research Excellence (CoRE). ^{[7] [8]}

Recognition

In addition to winning the Prime Minister's supreme award for tertiary teaching, ^[9] Ruru has also been made a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand. ^{[10] [11]} In 2017, Ruru was selected as one of the Royal Society Te Apārangi's " 150 women in 150 words", celebrating the contributions of women to knowledge in New Zealand. ^[12] In the same year she was invited to give the 10th Shirley Smith Memorial Address. Her speech was "First laws: tikanga Māori in / and the law". ^[13]

In October 2019, Ruru was appointed one of seven inaugural sesquicentennial distinguished chairs, or poutoko taiea, at Otago University. ^[14]

In 2019–20 Ruru was on the panel that wrote the controversial report He Puapua.

In the 2022 New Year Honours, Ruru was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to Māori and the law, and later that year received the University of Otago's Distinguished Research Medal. ^{[15] [16]}

Selected works

• Ruru, Jacinta. (2004). "A politically fuelled tsunami: the foreshore/seabed controversy in Aotearoa Me Te Wai Pounamu/New Zealand." The Journal of the Polynesian Society 113, no. 1: 57–72.
• Miler, Robert J., and Jacinta Ruru. (2008). "An Indigenous Lens into Comparative Law: The Doctrine of Discovery in the United States and New Zealand." West Virginia Law Review 111: 849.
• Ruru, Jacinta. (2009). The legal voice of Māori in freshwater governance: a literature review. Landcare Research, New Zealand.
• Abbott, Mick, and Jacinta Ruru, eds. (2010). Beyond the scene: Landscape and identity in Aotearoa New Zealand. Otago University Press.
• Ruru, Jacinta. (2004). "Indigenous peoples' ownership and management of mountains: The Aotearoa/New Zealand experience." Indigenous Law Journal 3: 111–137.
• Ruru, Jacinta, and Linda Waimarie Nikora, eds. (2021). Ngā Kete Mātauranga: Māori scholars at the research interface. Otago University Press. ISBN 978-1-98-859255-8

Personal life

Ruru was born in Australia and is of Raukawa, Ngāti Ranginui and Ngāti Maniapoto descent. Her mother and both maternal grandparents were English and Australian.^{[ citation needed]}

References

External links

• Jacinta Ruru on LinkedIn
• E-tangata interview