Dear all, A series of introductory lectures on higher categories will be given online by Yuki Maehara, starting on 31 Jan (Mon), then every Mon and Thu, and finishing on 17 Feb (Thu), as per below. -- Title: A friendly introduction to ∞-categories Lecturer: Yuki Maehara (Kyushu U) Abstract: ∞-categories are to spaces what ordinary categories are to sets. This nicely summarises the basic idea of ∞-categories, but there is a large gap between this intuition and the definition(s) of ∞-category one finds in the literature. The aim of these lectures is to fill this gap by answering the following question: What do we really mean by "spaces", and what sort of things do we want to do with them? Lecture 1: Homotopy groups and Whitehead's theorem Lecture 2: Kan complexes Lecture 3: Model categories Lecture 4: Homotopy commutative vs homotopy coherent Lecture 5: Quasi-categories via spines Lecture 6: Quasi-categories via inner horns Schedule: 31 Jan (Mon) 4-5pm (AEDT/GMT+11) 3 Feb (Thu) 4-5pm (AEDT/GMT+11) 7 Feb (Mon) 4-5pm (AEDT/GMT+11) 10 Feb (Thu) 4-5pm (AEDT/GMT+11) 14 Feb (Mon) 4-5pm (AEDT/GMT+11) 17 Feb (Thu) 4-5pm (AEDT/GMT+11) Held online via zoom at: https://anu.zoom.us/j/87221396938?pwd=azgxQmJWWWhtTUFHUGdpcXE2MGp6QT09 No registration required. Webpage (with the same information as above): https://sites.google.com/view/higher-category/home Thanks and best regards, Yoshihiro -- Yoshihiro Maruyama Senior Lecturer, School of Computing, CECS, The Australian National University Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia Contact: yoshihiro.maruyama@anu.edu.au [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]