Mathilda Twomey-Woods is a native of Seychelles. She speaks and writes in three languages: English, French and Creole. She holds a BA in English and French Law from the University of Kent at Canterbury and a Diplôme de Droit Français from the Université de Paris-Sud at Sceaux. She was admitted to the Bar of England and Wales in 1987 and practised in Seychelles as a barrister. She is a bencher of the Middle Temple. She later graduated with an LLM in Public Law and, subsequently, a PhD in comparative law from the University of Galway, Ireland, where she also tutored and lectured in tort law.

She was a member of the Seychelles Constitutional Commission in 1993, which was charged with drafting the third constitution of Seychelles. She was appointed to the Seychelles Court of Appeal in 2011 and as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Seychelles in 2015. She ended her tenure as Chief Justice in 2020 to pursue her academic interests but continues to serve in the Seychelles’ apex court as a sessional Justice of Appeal.

She was Chair of both the Civil Code Revision Commission and of the Child Law Reform Committee in Seychelles. In these roles, she was tasked with proposing a draft Civil Code that was passed by the National Assembly in 2020; and a Sexual Offences Bill, which was presented to the President in June 2021. She has been a member of the advisory board of the Global Judicial Integrity Network of the UNODC since 2017. She also chaired and continues to be a member of the Seychelles Legal Information Institute, which reports judgments of courts in Seychelles and its laws based on the principle of free access to law (See www.seylii.org).

She is the Academic Director of the Judicial Institute for Africa based at the University of Cape Town and an Adjunct Professor both at the University of Cape Town and of the School of Law at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She is also an Honorary Professor at the University of Seychelles and is a member of its Council. She was one of the initiators of the Post Grad Diploma in Judicial Studies at the University of Cape Town and teaches one of its mandatory components: Judicial Skills and Practical Jurisprudence.

She has devised and taught courses for the continuous professional development of judicial officers, lawyers and prosecutors in Angola, Cayman Islands, E-Swatini, Indonesia, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mozambique, Namibia, Philippines, Tanzania, South Africa, Seychelles, Thailand, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Uganda and Vietnam.

She is the secretary of the African Judicial Training Network, which brings collaboration between anglophone, francophone and lusophone training institutes across the whole of Africa. The Network recognises that the rule of law and democracy requires the establishment of an effective and credible judiciary and that the efficiency and credibility of the judiciary depend on the training of competent judicial officers. The Network's main aim is to harmonise the teaching programs of judges across Africa, with the Bangalore Principles being its mainstay.

She has published widely, including her monograph, “Legal Métissage in a Micro jurisdiction: the Mixing of Common Law and Civil Law in Seychelles.”