Named after a Weimar-era play by Bertolt Brecht, In the Jungle of Cities is a home for the odds and ends of writing, ideas, photographs and other ephemera that I create and collect. Most of what’s here relates in some way or another to urban history and urban culture, and especially that which is associated with European cities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

I hold a PhD in History of Art from the University of Glasgow. My thesis explored the art and architecture of Berlin’s working-class districts during the Weimar Republic, and was supported by a DAAD one-year scholarship.

I currently look after the digital collections of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Lindley Library in London. Previously, I worked at the British Library, first on the Qatar Digital Library, and latterly on the BL’s Discovering Sacred Texts digital learning project. Other roles have included working as a Curatorial Consultant for the Msheireb Museums in Doha, Qatar, and as Digitisation Coordinator at the Royal Academy Of Music. You can find my writing on the British Library’s website and blogs, the Qatar Digital Library, and elsewhere online, including the Public Domain Review.

Mark Hobbs, December 2019.