Hanna Wilberg

Hanna Wilberg’s research and teaching interests lie mainly in three areas: administrative law and administratie justice, social security law and policy, and the tort liability of public authorities. She has published in leading UK and Australian journals and edited collections in these areas.

In her administrative law work, one of her main objectives is to help increase the availability of scholarly analysis of New Zealand law in this area, informed by engagement with relevant overseas jurisdictions. She is currently writing a book on The Principles of Administrative Law in Aotearoa New Zealand, to be published by Hart in 2024. She is also the New Zealand Law Review’s contributor of scholarly reviews of recent developments in Administrative Law.

Hanna's new teaching initiative since 2021 is a course on Social Welfare Law, Policy and Action. This includes a clinical component, offering students the opportunity to write submissions on applications for review under the Social Security Act. Hanna engages in law reform advocacy in this area and provides media commentary.

In her work on tort liability of public authorities, Hanna addresses an audience across the main common law jurisdictions.

Before joining the Auckland faculty in 2004, Hanna taught at Southampton University in the UK. She was a research assistant to Professor Paul Craig at Oxford; a Judges' Clerk for Richardson P and Tipping, Blanchard, Keith, Thomas, Gault and Henry JJ at the Court of Appeal in Wellington; and practiced law at the Crown Law Office. At Auckland, events that Hanna has organised or co-organised include a workshop on NZ Administrative Law (February 2020), a workshop on Jerry Mashaw's new book Reasoned Administration (February 2016), the NZ Administrative Law conference and workshop (January 2015), the LRF conference on Judicial Review in Commercial Cases (2011), a NZ Public Law Colloquium (2011), and a symposium on Public Law in Three Nations (2010). She served as the co-editor of the New Zealand Law Review from 2008 to 2013.

Hanna currently serves as the Associate Dean (Equity and Diversity) for the Auckland Law School, a post she also held in 2017-2018.

Hanna was a Robert S Campbell Jr Visiting Fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford in 2023, a Herbert Smith Visitor at the University of Cambridge in 2014, a visitor at the University of Toronto in 2014, and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University in 2007.