Sally Wheeler

Wheeler was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to higher education in Northern Ireland. On 16 March 2017 Wheeler was elected to the position of Senior Vice-president of the Royal Irish Academy. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law in Dec 2018.

In 2013, Wheeler visited Australia to lead a series of workshops give talks discussing independence and accountability in superannuation. In these talks—which were supported by Herbert Smith Freehills, the Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia, and the Centre for Law Markets and Regulation—Wheeler argued that the trend for mandating a structural independence on the boards of listed companies had led to confusion, that this independence actually worked against the fostering of trust and respect between individuals who did not have "shared norms and values". Instead, in such structures independence of thought is supplanted by the less desirable independence of identity. In 2014, Australian news website The New Daily cited Wheeler as "one of the world’s leading experts on superannuation governance".

On her appointment in June 2013, Wheeler became the first lay member to join Northern Ireland's Lord Chief Justice's sentencing group. She also served as a governor of Corpus Christi College, Belfast.

Wheeler has served as editor of the Northern Ireland Legal Quarterly (NILQ) since 2004, she is on the advisory board of The Journal of Law and Society, and the editorial boards of Law and Critique, Insolvency Law and Practice, Law in Context, Griffith Law Review, and the Asian Journal of Law and Society. As of 2016, Wheeler is Vice Chair and Treasurer of the Committee of Heads of University Law Schools (CHULS), and in 2017 will become its Chair. Between 1995 and 1999, and 2002 and 2011, she was the Chair of the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA).

Wheeler was a member of the Law Panel for the 2001 and 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) and participated in the Romanian RAE in 2011. She has reviewed research for Law Schools at more than ten UK universities and contributed to strategic reviews at both UK and non-UK universities. Wheeler has also served as a member of the Economic and Social Research Council's (ESRC) Grants Board, the Postgraduate Training Recognition Panel, the Postdoctoral Fellowships Assessment Panel, and Seminar Competition Panel. She currently serves on assessment panels for the Irish Research Council and on various Royal Irish Academy committees. In 2014, she received a Prize for Contributions to the Socio-Legal Community from the Socio-Legal Studies Association.

At present, Wheeler is Dean of the Australian National University College of Law as well as Pro Vice-Chancellor for International Strategy. Prior to joining ANU she held a Chair in Corporate Law at Queen's University Belfast where she was also the Interim Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Enterprise. Whilst at Queen's Wheeler also served as the Faculty Dean for Internationalisation (AHSS), as the Interim Faculty Dean (AHSS), as Head of the School of Arts, English and Languages and, for five years, as the Head of the School of Law. Prior to taking this position, she worked at the University of Nottingham, Brunel, Keele, University of Manchester, Birkbeck and the University of Leeds (where she was appointed to her first chair in 1994 at the age of 29). She has acted as external examiner at more than thirteen universities across the United Kingdom and Ireland and has examined numerous Ph.D theses. She was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences in 2011 and the Royal Irish Academy in 2013. Wheeler has also held the position of Adjunct Professor at the University of Waikato, since 2013, and the position of Visiting Professor at Jilin University, China since 2015.

The elder daughter of Patrick Wheeler and Joan Twells, Sally Wheeler was born in Worcestershire and educated at the Alice Ottley School, Worcester, and the Abbey High School, Redditch. She read Law (Jurisprudence) at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and received a Doctorate of Philosophy from Pembroke College and the Oxford Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Wheeler has followed the fortunes of Aston Villa since 1968.

Sally Wheeler, OBE MRIA FAcSS (born 1964) is the Dean of Australian National University's College of Law and Pro Vice-Chancellor (International Strategy). She is also a Visiting Full Professor at the UCD Sutherland School of law and Adjunct Professor at Waikato University, New Zealand, and Jilin University, China. Wheeler was elected to the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Irish Academy in 2011 and 2013, respectively. She was previously a Professor at Queen's University Belfast and was the Head of the School of Law at Queen's University Belfast for several years, she also served as Interim Dean of the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS), Dean of Internationalisation (AHSS) and, in 2017, Interim Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research Enterprise. Wheeler is the author or co-author of several books on corporate governance, over 70 articles or book chapters, and she has edited or co-edited nine other books. Wheeler has given major addresses and led workshops around the world, and has also been cited as "one of the world’s leading experts" on the governance of pensions.