Margaret-Anne Hutton

Professor Margaret-Anne Hutton serves as Chair of French and Comparative Literature at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and founded the Institute for Contemporary and Comparative Literature (ICCL) in 2010. The ICCL functions as the institutional framework for the interdisciplinary project 'What is the contemporary?' (2015-2018), which secured two major Leverhulme Trust grants.

Her research centers on post-2000 literature with specialized expertise in crime fiction, 9/11 fiction, and WWII testimonial texts. She pioneers theoretical frameworks for understanding 'the contemporary', examining how literature processes historical trauma and constructs temporal consciousness across cultural contexts. Her methodological approach bridges literary analysis with historical and philosophical inquiry.

Hutton's publication trajectory reveals consistent engagement with traumatic 20th/21st-century events through comparative lenses. Her work demonstrates how French literature interrogates Holocaust memory, 9/11 geopolitics, and ethical dilemmas in contemporary fiction. The Leverhulme-funded project exemplifies her leadership in creating cross-disciplinary dialogues about temporal frameworks in modern cultural production.

As founder of the ICCL, Hutton has established a dynamic research ecosystem exploring contemporaneity through collaborative initiatives. The institute facilitates international scholarly exchange on how literature defines and responds to the present moment, connecting French studies with global literary currents and theoretical debates.