As a member of the University Executive, the Registrar, Prof Caroline Nicholson, is the line manager for the Legal Services Division, the Department of Internal Audit and Compliance Services, Information Governance, Employee Relations, the Department of Institutional Advancement, the Transformation Office, Javett-UP Arts Centre, UP Museums and the UP Archives. The Office of the Registrar is responsible for corporate governance and provides secretariat services related to the meetings of the University Executive as well as the University Council and the various statutory bodies and committees.

Prof Nicholson holds a BProc and LLB degrees from Wits, LLM and LLD degrees form Unisa and a PG Dip in ADR from AFSA/UP. She completed her articles with Hyde Park based firm Chernin’s and was admitted as both an attorney and a Notary Public in 1986.  In the same year she joined the Law Faculty of UNISA (Department of Jurisprudence) in 1986 and later moved to UP in 1999.  She moved up the academic ranks to Full Professor and HOD at UP before taking up a position with UFS in 2014 as Dean of the Faculty of Law. During her time at UFS she, together with Prof Andre Keet, founded the UFS Centre for Human Rights. Also during this period, Prof Nicholson was invited to take both the Judge’s Course and the Advanced Judge’s Course and acted as Judge in the High Court of the Free State in Bloemfontein on two occasions. In 2018 she moved back to UP to take up her current position.