Prof. Dodds's research focuses on legal deserts, rural areas where access to legal professionals is limited, and what these they reveal about inequality, governance, and access to justice. Situated within poverty law and rural studies, his work examines how law is experienced over time and in place, particularly in rural and low-income communities. He is interested in how structural factors, such as geography, institutional design, and economic conditions, shape the availability and meaning of legal rights, and how legal systems respond to communities that are persistently underserved. Prof. Dodds's article, Legal Deserts Over Time, is forthcoming in the Maine Law Review.
Prof. Dodds's research examines how administrative burdens embedded in public benefits systems shape access to food assistance, particularly in rural communities. Focusing on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), he studies how eligibility rules, documentation requirements, monitoring practices, and enforcement processes influence program participation and continuity over time. This work situates food insecurity within broader administrative and geographic contexts, emphasizing how distance, limited institutional capacity, and data-driven governance can interact with legal processes to affect household stability and health-related outcomes. Across projects, he seeks to better understand how the design and implementation of administrative systems condition access to essential resources in rural and low-income settings.