Professor Kindred has written widely on international, maritime and commercial law subjects, as well as on public legal education. Amongst his published work in the maritime field is a book he wrote with Max Ganado on Marine Cargo Delays (1990) and another he produced with Dr. Mary Brooks on Multimodal Transport Rules (1997). Together with Dr. Edgar Gold and Dr. Aldo Chircop he also prepared a text on Canadian Maritime Law (2003), which was co-winner of the Walter Owen Book Prize for the best text published in English in Canada during 2003-2005.  In addition, on two occasions Hugh Kindred has received awards for the papers he presented to the Canadian Transport Research Forum.  In 1982 he was the project coordinator and co-author of a study for Transport Canada on The Future of the Canadian Carriage of Goods by Water Law and subsequently he assisted the Department in the preparation of the Canadian Carriage of Goods by Water Act 1993. 

In the field of public international law, Professor Kindred is the co-general editor with Phillip Saunders and a co-author of International Law Chiefly as Interpreted and Applied in Canada, now in its 7th edition (2006) together with a documentary supplement and a supporting web site. In addition to its wide use in legal education and by federal officials concerned with foreign affairs, this volume has been cited numbers of times by courts, including the Supreme Court of Canada. In 1995 Hugh Kindred collaborated in developing and delivering the initial course on the Legal Framework of Modern Peacekeeping at the Lester B. Pearson Canadian International Peacekeeping Training Centre in Cornwallis NS. In 2006 he and three colleagues prepared a report for the Law Commission of Canada entitled Global Reach, Local Grasp: Constructing Extraterritorial Jurisdiction in the Age of Globalization, which was referred to by the Supreme Court R. v. Hape, 2007 SCC 26.  He is also the coordinator, as well as a reporter, of Canadian contributions to the Oxford Reports on International Law in Domestic Courts, an online service of cases and commentaries.

Professor Kindred has advised governments and other public bodies, including Transport Canada (regarding shipping legislation), the N.S. Department of Natural Resources (maritime boundaries), the N.S. Department of Consumer Affairs (consumer protection law), and the P.E.I. Department of the Attorney-General (court re-organization).  He was a founding director of the Public Legal Education Society of Nova Scotia (now the Legal Information Society of NS) and Coordinator of the Nova Scotia Project in High Schools for the NS Department of Education in 1976.  Hugh Kindred has participated in several Working Groups of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada in the field of commercial law. He was a member of the Canadian Maritime Law Association and past chair of its Carriage Documentation Committee, and he serves on the Board of Directors of the Canadian Council on International Law. He has also collaborated with the Center for International Business Studies at Dalhousie University in teaching, publishing and research, and he assists on the editorial boards of the Canadian Yearbook of International Law and the Ocean Yearbook.

In 2003 Professor Kindred was honoured by the Canadian Association of Law Teachers with its Award for Academic Excellence. In 2010 he was designated Professor Emeritus by Dalhousie University.