Mr Malcolm Combe
Reader
Law
Personal statement
Personal statement
Malcolm joined the School of Law in December 2019. Prior to that, he was a Senior Lecturer at the University of Aberdeen (which he joined in March 2011), and before that he was a solicitor in private practice in a Scottish law firm. Whilst in practice, he specialised in capital projects/infrastructure, and spent eight months on secondment to the investment arm of a FTSE 100 company. He also gained experience in commercial property, rural property, and banking. He qualified as a solicitor in Scotland in 2008 and in England and Wales in 2009.
As an academic Malcolm's work has tended to have a property law focus, with particular interests being land law reform, public access to land, and landlord and tenant law. He also has an interest in access to justice and clinical legal education.
Malcolm acts as the School's dedicated, research-active Communications Director, a role that includes the curation of content for the Strathclyde Law Blog.
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Area of Expertise
Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
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Publications
- A Research Agenda For Property Law. Ed by Bram Akkermans Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing (www.e-elgar.com), 2024. Elgar Research Agendas. viii + 277 pp ISBN: 9781803924809. £118
- Combe Malcolm
- Edinburgh Law Review (2026)
- What do indeterminacy and uncertainty mean in landscape research? Perspectives from natural sciences, social sciences, and arts
- Fremantle Chris, Vergunst Jo, Barwell Louise J, Bevan Anne, Cavers Stephen, Clarke Jennifer, Collins Timothy M, Goto Collins Reiko, Combe Malcolm M, Cottrell Joan, Douglas Anne, Edwards David, Ellison Aaron M, Heddon Deirdre, Heim Wallace, Kalshoven Petra Tjitske, Marion Glenn, Oliver Seth, Saraev Vadim, Veenman Sietske
- Landscape Research, pp. 1-19 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2025.2537772
- Abuse of rights in Scots and English law : a workable doctrine, in the public interest?
- Combe Malcolm
- European Review of Private Law Vol 33, pp. 903-928 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.54648/erpl2025051
- Dealing in cultural objects; dealing with a gap in Scots Law
- Combe Malcolm M
- Heritage in War and Peace IV (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.17868/strath.00093370
- The cost-of-living crisis and property regulation
- Combe Malcolm, Robbie Jill
- Edinburgh Law Review Vol 29, pp. 323-330 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.3366/elr.2025.0969
- The local authority duty to uphold access rights under the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003
- Combe Malcolm
- Edinburgh Law Review Vol 29, pp. 131-137 (2025)
- https://doi.org/10.3366/elr.2025.0944
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Teaching
Property law, land law (including land reform), commercial law, legal and professional skills, clinicial legal education, and access to justice.
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Professional Activities
- BBC Radio 4: Currently - RAAC and Ruin
- Interviewee
- 1/2/2026
- Festschrift - Private Law Reform in a Changing World: Essays in Honour of Professor Kenneth McK. Norrie (Journal)
- Peer reviewer
- 2026
- Residential Tenancies: The Latest Developments
- Speaker
- 10/12/2025
- Scotland Outdoors: Twenty Years of the Scottish Outdoor Access Code
- Interviewee
- 3/12/2025
- Scottish Outdoor Access Network Conference 2025
- Speaker
- 13/11/2025
- BBC Radio Scotland: "Out of Doors"
- Interviewee
- 6/10/2025
Projects
- Getting the balance right in private sector evictions in Scotland
- Combe, Malcolm (Principal Investigator) Halliday, Simon (Co-investigator)
- 01-Jan-2025 - 30-Jan-2028
- Paterson Festschrift
- Combe, Malcolm (Principal Investigator)
- 30-Jan-2024 - 31-Jan-2025
- Jumping the fence: transgressing knowledge enclosures of the land-food-environment nexus
- Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Vecchione, Marcela (Co-investigator)
- This project explores social tensions and ecological implications of both incumbent agricultural monocultures and of the transition of land use towards large scale ‘green’ projects. By considering the inequitable access to land, political power, finance and technology that are often masked by ‘greening’ projects, the project brings creative and transformative methods derived from traditional communities of Brazil into dialogue with community and academic practitioners in Scotland and the Amazon region of Brazil. It does so to creatively investigate disruption to unjust but apparently ‘locked-in’ land use practices towards diversified land and agrifood systems that promise improved human and environmental health outcomes.
- 01-Jan-2023 - 29-Jan-2024
- Carbon Offsetting and Communities: co-developing alternative place-based voluntary offsets in Scotland (£19,860)
- Hannon, Matthew (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Roberts, Jen (Co-investigator) Davidson, Magnus (Co-investigator) Anderson, Roxanne (Co-investigator) Haggett, Claire (Co-investigator)
- Voluntary carbon markets (VCMs) offer a means of offsetting carbon emissions, by funding projects that deliver equivalent carbon emissions reductions elsewhere. These are commonly natural capital “removal” offsets that sequester carbon, such as afforestation or peatland restoration project.
The sector is growing very quickly and the recent adoption of Article 6 at COP26 delivered a rulebook for carbon offsetting, which is likely to further accelerate this marketplace. Scotland has already seen major natural capital investments led by institutional investors, corporations and charitable trust, who are often referred to – albeit controversially - as “Green Lairds”. High profile examples include investments from BrewDog, Shell and Aviva. Despite its growing popularity, it is unclear whether VCM projects have provided Scottish communities with much direct benefit or control.
To address this, this Scottish Universities Insight Institute funded project will deliver a series of events between researchers and practitioners that explore how VCMs are impacting Scottish communities and how they could be re-designed to maximize place-based, community benefits. The project will improve our understanding of the:
1. Distribution, scale and nature of current natural capital VCMs in Scotland;
2. Impact natural capital VCMs are having on communities;
3. Alternative VCM designs to deliver place-based community benefit and social justice;
4. Routes to co-develop and implement new VCMs in partnership with communities; and
5. Policy, legal and market conditions necessary for their adoption.
The project aims to initiate an informed, evidence-based national discussion about how best to design and implement carbon offsets, in a way that supports a net-zero, Just Transition. - 01-Jan-2022 - 01-Jan-2023
- Scotland’s Land Reform Futures
- Combe, Malcolm (Researcher)
- The project ‘Scotland’s Land Reform Futures’ will support Scottish Government policy development regarding land reform, community land ownership and engagement in land use decision-making, as well as increase understanding of the role of land ownership and land reform in achieving net zero emissions and reversing biodiversity decline in Scotland. The project will build knowledge of Scottish land reform processes and outcomes that can contribute to wider global land issues requiring urgent attention. It will seek to advance social theory on community empowerment, social justice, and the potential for progressive property rights in Scotland. The research team comprises researchers from the James Hutton Institute and Scotland’s Rural College. It is part of the Scottish Government’s Strategic Research Programme 2022-2027.
- 29-Jan-2022
- (UN)EARTHING NEW PATHWAYS FOR A JUSTICE TRANSITION: CULTIVATING HOPE AND FOOD ON CONTESTED TERRAINS IN SCOTLAND, AMAZON AND THE ARCTIC
- Garvey, Brian (Principal Investigator) Combe, Malcolm (Co-investigator) Shapovalova, Daria (Co-investigator)
- The programme brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers from Law, Geography, Sociology of Work and Political Economy with leading figures from crofting, smallholding and indigenous communities in Scotland, the Amazon and Arctic.
This project aims to collectively produce and share both ancestral and new academic knowledge across a nexus that is critical to a just transition: the globalised financialisation of land for both the carbon and green economy, smallholder and community access to land, and sustainable production of food. These dimensions come to ground, literally, in arable land that has been an increasingly prized destination for corporate finance, with subsequent rising land prices and a deepening of contestation between commodity and food production. The programme is attentive to new policy instruments in Scotland including land reform, transparency and local empowerment and the plural ways in which other communities negotiate tensions between land asset capture for speculation, monocultures and energy forms on one hand; and rural or forest based livelihoods on the other.
The programme hinges on a hopeful dialogue across these frontiers in order to i) unearth commonality in values, experiences and aspirations for socially and ecologically committed cultivation of land; ii) investigate legal instruments within and across borders for their realisation; iii) make recommendations for effective policy implementation in Scotland. - 01-Jan-2022 - 03-Jan-2022