Professor Vivienne Lawack

Deputy Vice Chancellor
Academic & Project Sponsor

Professor Vivienne Lawack is the Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic at UWC and the project sponsor of MMICA. She is also a Professor of Law in the Department of Mercantile and Labour Law in the Faculty of Law at UWC and serves on several boards and councils, including being chair of the Moravian Church Trust, a member of the South African Judicial Education Institute Council and a member of the Kepler Institute Board and Kepler College Board (Rwanda). Professor Lawack holds a BJuris (cum laude), a LLB (cum laude) and an LLM from Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. She also holds a LLD from UNISA. She is an admitted, non-practising advocate of the High Court of South Africa.

 Professor Lawack began and advanced her legal career by spending several years at the South African Reserve Bank in various capacities, including senior payment system analyst, senior legal consultant and legal consultant, and as Senior Legal Counsel for Strate Limited, South Africa’s central securities depository. In 2008, she moved to the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth where she served as the Executive Dean of the Faculty of Law. Before joining the higher education sector, Prof Lawack worked in the public and private sector as a senior payment system analyst, senior legal consultant, and Manager: Financial Safety Net at the South African Reserve Bank (SARB). She worked as Senior Legal Counsel for Strate Limited, South Africa’s central securities depository, where she was also responsible for the amendment of the depository rules known as the Strate Rules.

 Regarding her academic career, Professor Lawack’s extensive research publications centre around legal and regulatory frameworks in payment systems, fintech, and banking and financial markets, with a particular lens on financial inclusion, financial integrity and migration. She has published articles on mobile banking the legal and regulatory aspects of international remittances and their impact on migrant workers and asylum seekers in South Africa.  She is an expert in law, economics, and the intersection of the two fields, both at an international level and in the South African context. She also has contract, policy, and legislative drafting experience. 

Professor Lawack is highly engaged in her community, regularly chairing and/or participating in various committees in the legal, financial and education sectors, leveraging her expertise to add value and push her community to greater heights. Thus, she is spearheading MMICA’s vision for Scholarship of Engagement for Societal Impact in relation to migration and refugee concerns.