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dents at university, giving them real-life examples of how decisions were
made in the insurance field. Daleen lectured at Vista University until 2003
and at the University of Pretoria from 2003 to early 2007, by which time she
had obtained her LL.D. (in 2006) from the University of Johannesburg.
Ultimately, Daleen decided it was time to choose between, as she
describes it, the classroom or the courtroom, both of which she enjoyed.
The classroom won out. She loved interacting with students, who kept her
on her toes, and loved studying and learning new things without being put
into the box that legal practice can sometimes involve. Another frustration
with the day-to-day practice of law was what she terms its “stop/start”
nature: as an advocate, she would get to court only to find that a hearing had
to be postponed, wasting the day; things did not happen in clear time
frames and there were many variables. By contrast, the classroom was a
more controlled environment, with certain defined tasks to be accomplished
over any given term.
A further push toward the university option was that her husband was
also a litigation lawyer; having two lawyers in one household was hard. In
2006, they welcomed their daughter, Claire Theresa.
In February 2007, Daleen joined the University of Johannesburg as an
associate professor. In November 2012, she became a full professor at that
university. In her time as an academic, she focused on tort law, the law of
contract and insurance law. In August 2016, she became the vice dean of
law at the University of Johannesburg, overseeing teaching, learning and
research. Her work addressed matters such as the effective use of technology
in teaching and learning, and matters of decolonization.
Daleen lived in Pretoria throughout her life until moving to Kamloops,
though most of her professional life was in Johannesburg, a cosmopolitan
and fast-paced city with an exciting diversity in both its workplaces and the
work. Many people make the daily commute from Pretoria to Johannesburg,
but it is a challenging one and the highway between the cities is one
of the most congested in the southern hemisphere. Daleen was regularly on
the highway by 5:30 a.m. and her hair would be just about dry on arriving
at her destination. The daily commute resulted in various aches and pains
over time.
Somehow Daleen nonetheless found time to write a dazzling array of articles,
chapters and books; participate in conferences; supervise numerous
dissertations; and continue with her work consulting for insurance companies.
At various points, she was also a member of research ethics committees
at the University of Pretoria and later at the University of Johannesburg. Her
publications address topics in the fields of insurance, financial services and