A major new research centre dedicated to the work of Scotland’s bard Robert Burns will be launched this weekend by Glasgow University.

The Centre for Robert Burns Studies is intended to be a “hub” of critical research offering new insights into the work of Burns and will feature projects such as the AHRC Global Burns Network, which will analyse Burns’ impact outside of Scotland. In addition a Global Burns website will be launched with links to the Centre and major conferences taking place in Edinburgh and Prague in 2009. 

Future projects will also include: the completion of a new ten volume edition of the works of Burns; an online edition of the letters of Burns’ first editor James Currie; a series of public lectures to encourage continued active debate on Burns and his cultural and scholarly contributions; and major conferences in 2008 and 2009 to celebrate the 250th anniversary of his birth. 

The centre will include respected scholars of Burns, such as Professor G. Ross Roy of the University of South Carolina, and will be directed by Dr Gerard Carruthers from the University of Glasgow’s Department of Scottish Literature. 

Dr Carruthers said: “No writer has wider appeal, both popular and scholarly than Burns. One of the greatest poets and also one of the finest song-writers produced by Scotland, or for that matter Britain, Burns is someone who matters in so many ways. Along with the sheer creative art that he expresses, he is a writer who is a crucial intellectual figure of the Enlightenment age, and a Romantic writer whose depiction of Scotland and of the wider world speaks of a new age of global concerns.  

“The politics, theology, economics, history and many other interests that inform his work all point to the revolutions of the world and of the human mind that accompany the late eighteenth century and which underpin to a large degree life in the twenty first century.  

“As well as his work, the world has remained fascinated with Burns in other ways which makes him a huge cultural icon, a phenomenon in itself that is worthy of long and deep investigation, and the new Centre will make a contribution to its understanding.” 

The centre will open on Saturday with a lecture from Dr Fiona Stafford of Somerville College, University of Oxford, entitled ‘A Centre in the Breast: Robert Burns and Happiness’, which will be held in the Burns Room at the Mitchell Library.

If you wish to attend the lecture please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it