Biography
Dr Dodd returned to Edinburgh Napier University in May 2024 as Associate Professor of Scots Private Law having previously taught at the University of Glasgow (2017-19), Edinburgh Napier University (2019-22) and the University of Stirling (2022-24). He has very wide teaching experience, primarily in private law, having taught the Scots law of contract, delict, trusts and succession, property law, Roman law, constitutional and administrative law, business entities, business and corporate law, and legal history.
Dr Dodd's research deals primarily with the legal and intellectual history of Scottish and European Private Law and particularly on the 16th century Scottish legal writer Thomas Craig (c.1538-1608). He is particularly interested in the relationship between feudal-legal thought in early modern Scotland and Continental legal humanism and especially on the influence of the French legal humanists Bodin and Hotman on early modern Scots legal literature.
Currently, Dr Dodd is engaged in a long-term project to produce a Latin edition with facing English translation of Thomas Craig's Jus feudale tribus libris comprehensum, the first comprehensive legal treatise ever written in Scotland. The first volume (of a projected four) was published in 2017 by the Stair Society and the second volume will be published in summer 2025. Work proceeds on the third volume.
In addition to his work on Craig's legal writings, Dr Dodd retains a strong interest in Craig's other prose works, particularly the De unione regnorum Britanniae, and on the relationship between Thomas Craig and other British humanists and legal writers in the period before and immediately after the Union of the Crowns.
Subsidiary research interests include the early modern and mediaeval reception of Roman law; late antique Germanic law codes (esp. the Burgundian Code); the law of damages in its comparative context; trusts and constructive trusts in Scots law; digital assets and cryptocurrency within Scots and English property law; smart contracts; comparative intestacy law and Scots intestacy law generally; tacit relocation; the concept of ownership in European thought, from antiquity to present; and the relationship between Latin antiquity and early modern Scottish law and legal thought.
In addition to his duties at Edinburgh Napier University, Dr Dodd acts as external examiner in law at Glasgow Caledonian University and has acted as a proposal reviwer for the Polish National Science Centre (Narodowe Centrum Nauki) for projects relating to Roman law and European legal history.
Dr Dodd also serves currently as a council member of the Stair Society and as secretary and treasurer of the Scottish Legal History Group. In Nov 2023, in recognistion of his legal-historical research, Dr Dodd was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.