2015

Our President in 2015/6 was:

Professor Gerard Carruthers

He proposed the Toast to Sir Walter at our 107th Annual Dinner on 10th March 2016.

Professor Gerard Carruthers FRSE is Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. He is General Editor of the Oxford Collected Works of Robert Burns and was Founding Director of the Centre for Robert Burns Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2007.

He is the University of Glasgow representative on the Joint Advisory Committee at Abbotsford and with Alison Lumsden edited Scott's Reliquiae Trotcosienses (Edinburgh University Press, 2004).

He holds a visiting professorship of English at UESTC (China), has been Visiting Professor of English at the University of Wyoming, Stuart Visiting Fellow at the University of Otago (New Zealand), W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Visiting Research Fellow at the University of South Carolina, Visiting Research Fellow at All Souls, Oxford, and an external examiner for a range of United Kingdom and overseas universities. He is on the editorial board of six academic journals and has written or edited twenty three books and over one hundred and eighty essays and reviews. 

He was born in Stirlingshire, brought up in Clydebank, and prior to taking up a post at the University of Glasgow, was Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Strathclyde (1995-2000) and British Academy Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen (1993-5) working on the Edinburgh Edition of the Waverley Novels. 

He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a Fellow of the English Association, an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature and is the first Honorary Fellow of the World Burns Federation.