Jens Martin Gurr is professor of British and Anglophone Literature and Culture at the University of Duisburg-Essen. He has twelve years of research experience in the field of Literary Urban Studies with five edited collections and some thirty essays in this field alone. As director of the interdisciplinary Joint Center "Urban Systems" at the University of Duisburg-Essen and Speaker of the Competence Field "Metropolitan Research" in the University Alliance Ruhr, he has directed and co-directed numerous disciplinary and interdisciplinary research projects.