Dr Severine Saintier
(she/her)

Professor of Law and Director of Recruitment and Admissions

: SaintierS@cardiff.ac.uk
: +44 29208 74366
: 2 North Road, Floor 2nd , Room 202, Cathays, Cardiff, CF10 3DY

: Available for postgraduate supervision

I joined Cardiff as a Professor in commercial law in January 2023. Prior to that, I held position at Exeter University, Sheffield and Liverpool.

I studied law in France until 1993 before coming to the UK to read for an LLM (Staffordshire University) and a PhD (Sheffield University) under the late Professor Bradgate.

My primary research interest is in the field of contract/commercial law, broadly defined. My research is comparative in nature. My PhD was in the field of commercial agency contracts where I have published two monographs (one co-authored) and numerous journal articles. In this field, my work has been widely cited. Most recently, in the Court of Appeal in Computer Associates UK Ltd v The Software Incubator [2018] EWCACiv 518.

I am, with Professor Rob Merkin KC, Reading University, the co-editor of Jill Poole's Contract Law Textbook and Contract Law casebook (the latest edition came out in May 2023). I am also co-author of the forthcoming 4th edition of Bradgate's Commercial law with Dr Sean Thomas (York University) and Dr Reza Beheshti (Nottingham University).

I have taught in France at the Université Jean Moulin (professor invité), Université Bordeaux IV and Strasbourg University.

My main area of research is in comparative commercial/contract law loosely defined. I have three distinct areas of expertise all linked by the underlying theme of using commercial/contract law as a tool to protect the weaker party.

First, through the specific lens of commercial agency, where I have published 2 monographs (one co-authored) and numerous articles and explored how concepts such as good faith and loyalty have been used to create a more equal relationship between the commercial agents and their principals.

This lead me to explore good faith in a wider setting, commercial/contract law more generally. In this wider field, I have worked on the synergy that exists between good faith and relational contracts and applied this synergy both in the business and the consumer contracts. LInked to this is the third and most recent strand of my research on vulnerability where I have collaborated with Professor Riefa in Reading, Dr Dodsworth in Newcastle on consumer vulnerability. Vulnerability extends beyond transactional weakness and includes wider societal aims such as energy justice and climate change, themes explored with Professor Heldeweg (Twente University, in the Netherland) and more recently in the form of a workshop on the rights of Nature held in Exeter in September 2022 and how to link Nature with spirituality with Alex Pimor from the Earth Law Centre.

Finally, this work on vulnerability is also cutting age since it is linked to an externally funded-research project on the circular revolution (https://circularrevolution.wales/) with Dr Vessio (Exeter). The project is funded by the Welsh government and the EU.

I am teaching on the first year contract law module and the final year commercial law module as well as comparative law

I am currently co-supervising with Dr Rueda in Exeter, Solomon Lam on the topic of Ascertaining loss of profit claims under different standard forms of construction contracts in Hong Kong.