Associate ProfessorToni Collins

Associate Professor Dr Toni Collins is a specialist in land law and disaster law, with a research focus on how legal frameworks respond to major earthquake and other natural hazard events and other forms of disruption. Her work examines the resilience of legal systems to disasters and the effectiveness of contractual obligations, risk allocation mechanisms, and statutory interventions in supporting post-disaster recovery.

Toni’s PhD analysed the impacts of the 2010–2011 Canterbury earthquakes on commercial landlords and tenants, offering new insights into how these relationships operate under seismic stress. Her current research extends this analysis to the 2016 Kaikōura and Wellington earthquakes, the 2023 Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle and more recently the impacts of sea level rise through climate change tracing how communities and regions are supported (or not) through legal preparedness.

Her broader interests include disaster recovery law, emergency management law, land system resilience, and the interface between land law and risk governance. Toni teaches Land Law at UC, at both introductory and advanced levels integrating contemporary case studies and disaster-related legal challenges to support students’ understanding of how the law functions in real-world contexts.

Key words: disaster, resilience, legal frameworks, legal preparedness