There has been a long history of rich and subtle connections between low dimensional topology, mapping class groups and geometric group theory. From July 1 to July 5, 2013, the conference “Interactions between low dimensional topology and mapping class groups” held at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Bonn highlighted these diverse connections, and fostered new and unexpected collaborations between researchers in these areas.

The proceedings for this conference aims to further draw attention to the beautiful mathematics emerging from diverse interactions between these areas. The articles collected in this volume, in addition to gathering new results, also contain expositions and surveys of the latest developments in various active areas of research at the interface of mapping class groups of surfaces and the topology and geometry of 3– and 4–dimensional manifolds. Many open problems and new directions for research are discussed.

Details on the conference, including the schedule, list of participants, and videos of the main lectures can be found at the conference webpage.