Moduli spaces of complex surfaces

Paul Hacking (University of Washington)
Wednesday March 24th, 2009

The moduli space of complex curves of genus g has been intensively studied since Riemann. On the other hand, moduli spaces of complex surfaces are only poorly understood at present. I will survey what is known and discuss some examples. In particular I will describe the natural compactification analogous to the Deligne--Mumford compactification of the moduli space of curves.