Configurational mechanics has attracted quite a bit of attention from various - search fields over the recent years/decades. Having been regarded in its infancy of the early years as a somewhat obscureand almost mystic field of researchthat could only be understood by a happy few of insiders with a pronounced theoretical inc- nation, configurational mechanics has developed by now into a versatile tool that can be applied to a variety of problems. Since the seminal works of Eshelby a general notion of configurational - chanics has been developed and has successfully been applied to many pr- lems involving various types of defects in continuous media. The most pro- nent application is certainly the use of configurational forces in fracture - chanics. However, as configurational mechanics is related to arbitrary mat- ial inhomogeneities it has also very successfully been applied to many ma- rials science and engineering problems such as phase transitions and inelastic deformations. Also the modeling of materials with micro-structure evolution is an important field, in which configurational mechanics can provide a better understanding of processes going on within the material. Besides these mechanically, physically, and chemically motivated applications, ideas from configurational mechanics are now increasingly applied within computational mechanics.