New faculty: Ben Dodds

Dr. Ben Dodds, a scholar with diverse interests and an accomplished educator, joins the FSU history department in fall 2017, after many years at Durham University. Dodds is by training a historian of late medieval England, whose work has focused on social and economic history, particularly of the peasantry. In his book, Peasants and Production in the Medieval North-East: The Evidence from Tithes, 1270-1536 (2007), Dodds analyzed revelatory evidence in previously underappreciated sources, revealing peasants to have been savvy economic actors. Research on Robin Hood and banditry more generally then led Dodds to an entirely different area of inquiry, the bandit literature of Spain in the early modern and modern periods. A book on this topic is currently in preparation. Meanwhile, Dodds remains a committed medievalist, with ongoing research related to the impact of the Black Death in late medieval England. On this topic, Dodds is the co-editor of the volume Agriculture and Rural Society after the Black Death: Commen Themes and Regional Variations (2008). In addition to these books, and articles in journals such as the Economic History Review and Social History, Dodds is an accomplished educator, recognized as such by awards from both Durham University (2008) and its students (2014). In Fall 2017, he will teach courses on the Black Death (EUH 3930-2) and Blood and Roses: England in the Late Middle Ages (EUH 3930-1).