IUTAM Symposium on Progress in the Theory and Numerics of Configurational MechanicsCon? gurational mechanics has attracted quite a bit of attention from various search ? elds over the recent years decades. Having been regarded in its infancy of the early years as a somewhat obscureand almost mystic ? eld of researchthat could only be understood by a happy few of insiders with a pronounced theoretical inc nation, con? gurational mechanics has developed by now into a versatile tool that can be applied to a variety of problems. Since