Date & Time: Wednesday, November 27, 2013, 16:00-17:00.
Venue: Ramanujan Hall

Speaker: Athanase Papadopoulos, Université de Strasbourg

Title: Mapping Class Groups of Surfaces

Abstract: I will dicsuss several actions of the mapping class group of a surface on various spaces: simplicial complexes, Teichmüller spaces, and various spaces of foliations and of laminations. In most cases, the action is rigid, that is, the group of automorphisms of the space (simplicial automorphisms, biholomorphsms, isometries, homeomorphisms, etc., depending on the setting) coincides with the natural image of the mapping class group in that automorphism group.