Jason Finch

Jason Finch is Associate Professor, English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University, and adjunct professor in the department of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku. He has written or co-edited eight books, including Deep Locational Criticism (Benjamins, 2016), Literary Second Cities (Palgrave, co-edited, 2017) and The Materiality of Literary Narratives in Urban History (Routledge, co-edited 2020). Jason is a co-founder of the Association for Literary Urban Studies (ALUS) and currently (2018–22) its President. His current research focuses on the literary urban history of London (focusing on representations of housing and public transport), mediations of the urbanity of British and US cities which boomed in the nineteenth century, and the practice of literary urban studies.

Jason Finch was born in London in 1970. In the UK he was educated at the University of Birmingham (BA, 1991) and the University of Oxford (MPhil, 1994). Between 1996 and 1998 he worked as an Assistant Editor on the third edition revisions of the Oxford English Dictionary. From 2002 until 2005 he worked at the Estonian Institute of Humanities, Tallinn University. He has been at Åbo Akademi University since 2005.

Since 2006, Jason has taught courses in every aspect of English literary studies in the department of English Language and Literature at Åbo Akademi University, at levels ranging from first year to Master's. He has supervised nearly 30 BA and MA theses and nine PhD theses, three as main supervisor (two completed, seven in progress, as of October 2020). He also has university teaching experience in Estonia (Tallinn University) and the UK (Brasenose College, Oxford).