Yvette Tinsley

Yvette Tinsley is a New Zealand law academic, and is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in the impacts of the justice system on its participants. In 2025 Tinsley was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.

Academic career

Tinsley completed a Bachelor of Laws and a PhD titled Identification parades: upholding the integrity of the criminal justice process? at the University of Birmingham. Tinsley then joined the Faculty of Law at Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington, rising to full professor. She is co-director of the, and researches issues such as the experience of justice processes on participants, and their impact.
Tinsley is a member of the Principal Committee of the International Penal and Penitentiary Foundation, representing New Zealand.
In March 2025 Tinsley was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi for "her leading contribution to socio-legal research on jury decision-making, sexual offences, and lawyers’ well-being".

Yvette Tinsley. Pale Shelter, Cold Hands: Making Criminal Justice Better. Victoria University of Wellington Law Review, 52, 623–642. https://doi.org/10.26686/vuwlr.v52i3.7335 https://ojs.victoria.ac.nz/vuwlr/article/view/7335
Elisabeth McDonald and Yvette Tinsley From Real Rape to Real Justice: Prosecuting Rape in New Zealand. https://teherengawakapress.co.nz/from-real-rape-to-real-justice-prosecuting-rape-in-new-zealand/
Yvette Tinsley, Science in the Criminal Courts: Tool in Service, Challenge to Legal Authority or Indispensable Ally? Oct 2013 New Zealand Universities Law Review 25:844-865 https://www.nzulr.com/archives/vol25no4.htm
Kim R, Tyler N, Tinsley Y. "Wading through the worst that humanity does to each other": New Zealand Crown prosecutors' experiences of working with potentially traumatic material in the criminal justice system. Front Psychol. 2023 Jun 22;14:1164696. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1164696. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37425163/