Alex Murray teaches in the School of English at Queen's University Belfast. His research focuses mainly on Decadence and the writing of the fin de siècle, literature and place (particularly London, New York and Paris), travel writing, modernism, and literary and critical theory. Most recently he has co-edited Decadent Poetics: Literature and Form at the British Fin de Siècle (2013), and has written a number of articles on the relationship between Decadence and the literature of the early-twentieth century in MFS Modern Fiction Studies and Modernism/modernity. His monograph, Giorgio Agamben (2010), is printed in four languages.

• 1. Landscapes of Decadence: reading sermons in stone; 2. The disappearing ghosts of Naples; 3. Paris and London, world-flowers twain; 4. Stirring the Cumnor cowslips in Decadent Oxford; 5. The glowing furnace of Decadent Wales; 6. Venice, sans hope: reading Decadent New York.

'In Landscapes of Decadence, Murray argues that writing of landscapes - rural or urban - provided Decadent authors with a way of exploring not only location, but identity … Murray's work … convincingly examines the adaptability and evolution of Decadence during the period.' Sally Blackburn, The British Society for Literature and Science Reviews (www.bsls.ac.uk)