Jackie Benschop

Jackie Benschop is a New Zealand Professor of Veterinary Public Health at Massey University, specialising in the animal–human–environment interface, particularly for Leptospira, Campylobacter and Salmonella. She is a member of the World Health Organisation's Steering Committee for the Global Leptospirosis Environmental Action Network, and a co-founder of the African Leptospirosis Network.

Academic career
Benschop completed a PhD titled  'Epidemiological investigations of surveillance strategies of zoonotic Salmonella'  at Massey University in 2009. Benschop then joined the Massey faculty, where she is co-director of the Molecular Epidemiology and Public Health Laboratory. She was promoted to full professor from 1 January 2021.

Benschop is a global expert on zoonotic diseases. Her particular specialty is diseases transmitted via food or in occupational settings. From 2009 to 2011 she led a FRST-funded project on infectious diseases and climate variation, and in 2009 was appointed to a conjoint position with ESR. She has worked on leptospirosis in work settings, including abattoirs and farms, and is a member of the World Health Organisation's Steering Committee for the Global Leptospirosis Environmental Action Network. Benschop is a co-founder of the African Leptospirosis Network, which supports African scientists through a range of activities, including mentoring, outbreak identification, access to scientific literature and PhD student opportunities at Massey.

In 2016 Benschop received a C. Alma Baker Trust Fellowship to travel to the UK, where she was hosted by Profesor Ruth Zadoks and Drs Kathryn Allan and Jo Halliday at the Institute of Biodiversity, Animal Health and Comparative Medicine at the University of Glasgow.