Gerard Carruthers is Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow. He is General Editor of the ongoing Oxford University Press edition of the collected works of Robert Burns, and is author or editor of 24 books and over 170 academic essays. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, a board member of the Ellisland Robert Burns Trust, an Honorary Advisor to the National Trust for Scotland and serves on the Joint Advisory Committee with oversight of Walter Scott's Library at Abbotsford. He is also a Trustee of the Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Trust.