Gerry Carruthers holds the established Francis Hutcheson Chair of Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Previously, he held posts at the universities of Aberdeen and Strathclyde. He is General Editor of the Oxford University Press multi-volume edition of the Collected Works of Robert Burns; as well as on Burns, he works on Walter Scott (being a member of the Joint Advisory Committee at Abbotsford), the Scottish Enlightenment, politics, religion and literature in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, manuscript authenticity and some areas of the twentieth century, including Muriel Spark. He is author or editor of 24 books and over 175 academic articles, and has garnered £2.2 million in research income.

He is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature and was the first elected Fellow of the World Burns Federation. Secretary & Trustee at Ellisland Museum and Farm, a member of the Research & Ethics Panel for Paisley Museum Reimagined, he is also a trustee of the Scottish Catholic Heritage Collections Trust. A member of the peer-review college for UKRI Future Talent scheme, he is a regular reviewer for academic presses and award schemes. Gerry Carruthers has held visiting posts at the University of South Carolina, the University of Wyoming, the University of Otago and All Souls College (Oxford). He is a Visiting Professor in English Studies at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (Chengdu).