The Fifth World Congress of Scottish Literatures will be held at Nanjing Normal University in Nanjing, China, on 17-20 June 2027. Being China’s first city designated as a “UNESCO City of Literature”, Nanjing—the venue for this congress—is not only a time-honored ancient capital of six dynasties but also boasts a millennia-old literary heritage. The main theme of this congress, “Scotland Along the New Silk Road”, underscores the dynamic interplay between Scottish literature with the diverse literary landscapes along this transcontinental bridge of cultural exchanges.
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Gerard Carruthers is Francis Hutcheson Professor of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow and General Editor of the multi-volume Oxford University Press edition of the Collected Works of Robert Burns. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and National Convenor of the Saltire Society, he is the author/editor of twenty four books; his co-edited Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Scottish Literature (325,000 words) will appear during 2027.
A native of Canada, Robert Dunbar is the Chair of Celtic Languages, Literature, History and Antiquities at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include Gaelic language, literature and culture in Canada and the wider Gaelic diaspora, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Gaelic literature, Gaelic oral tradition, Gaelic identities, sociolinguistics of and language policy for Gaelic and other Celtic languages, and the linguistic and cultural rights of minoritised peoples. He is Chair of Bòrd na Gàidhlig, the principal language planning body for Gaelic, and is a member of the Committee of Experts of the Council of Europe’s European Charter for Regional Regional or Minority Languages, and is a frequent contributor to Gaelic media.
Lorna Hutson is Merton Professor of English Literature at Oxford. She has taught at QMUL, Hull, UC Berkeley and St Andrews. Her books include Thomas Nashe in Context (Oxford, 1989), The Usurer’s Daughter (Routledge, 1994), Rhetoric and Law in Early Modern Europe (with Victoria Kahn, Yale, 2001), The Invention of Suspicion (Oxford, 2007), Circumstantial Shakespeare (Oxford, 2015) and the Oxford Handbook of English Law and Literature, 1500-1700. In 2023 she ventured into Anglo-Scots literary history with England’s Insular Imagining: The Elizabethan Erasure of Scotland (Cambridge) which won the Saltire Research prize in 2024. She is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Murray Pittock D.Litt. Hon. D. Litt. MAE FRSE is Bradley Professor and Pro Vice-Principal at the University of Glasgow and has been repeatedly named Scotland’s leading public intellectual and cultural historian. He is best known for his work on Jacobitism and on national Enlightenment and Romantic movements in Europe. His Shortest History of Scotland (2026) has six recommendations or awards to date and has been described by Liam McIlvanney as ‘a triumph of style as well as selection… an outstanding single-volume history of Scotland’. Murray is the founding Convenor of IASSL and a senior member of the Centre for Robert Burns’ Studies Queen’s Anniversary Prize winning team.
Carla Sassi is Associate Professor of English literature at the University of Verona. She specialises in modern and contemporary Scottish literature with a comparative, theory-driven approach. Her research focuses on Scottish literary and cultural nationalism and the intersections between Scottish and Postcolonial/Decolonial studies. She has published and lectured widely in these fields, and has served actively within the main Scottish literary associations. Her publications include Why Scottish Literature Matters (2005), Caribbean-Scottish Relations (co-authored, 2007), and The International Companion to Scottish Poetry (editor, 2015). She delivered the ASLS Scottish Literature International Lecture at the Scottish Parliament in 2013, was appointed Honorary Fellow of ASLS in 2021, and served as Convener of IASSL (2020–23).
Jincai Yang earned his BA in English from Soochow University in 1985. He then studied at Nanjing University, completing an MA and a PhD in British and American Literature between 1989 and 1998. He is currently Professor of English Literature and American Studies, Director of the Institute of Foreign Literature, and chief editor of Journal of Contemporary Foreign Literature. He was a special student (1996–1998) and visiting scholar (2007–2008) at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Hong Kong and Australian National University. A recipient of numerous awards, including research prizes from the Jiangsu Provincial Government and the Ministry of Education, he specializes in British and American literature and contemporary Chinese literature and culture. He has published extensively, including Herman Melville and Imperialism (2001), Trends of Foreign Literatures in the New Century (2019), Power (2024), and Approaching the Features of Urbanization in 21st-Century American Fiction (2026).
KEYNOTE WRITER
Rodge Glass is the author of nine books across fiction, nonfiction and literary criticism published since 2005. These include Hope for Newborns (Faber), Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs (Serpent’s Tail), Alasdair Gray: A Secretary’s Biography (Bloomsbury), Michel Faber: The Writer and his Work (LUP, 2023), Joshua in the Sky: A Blood Memoir (Taproot Press) and As One: Remaking Suede (New Modern, 2026). Rodge won a Somerset Maugham Award for Nonfiction, he won the Anne Brown Essay Prize, he’s been nominated for multiple awards and widely translated. Recent criticism appeared in Short Fiction in Theory and Practice, Studies in Scottish Literature and Études écossaises. Future projects include Beyond the Shanda: On Scottish Jewish Literature (2028.) He is a regular on Radio Scotland’s Faith Forum, has delivered Thought for the Day and appeared regularly on BBC Radio 4. Rodge is a Reader in Creative Writing at the University of Strathclyde.
