The NBGGT network is a joint seminar series, meeting three times a year, that brings together mathematicians working in (geometric) group theory and related areas from universities from Scotland and the North of England: Aberdeen, Durham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, St Andrews, etc. The network is currently coordinated by Laura Ciobanu and Alexandre Martin.
In 2025-2026, the NBGGT met in Edinburgh, Manchester, and Aberdeen.
The NBGGT network has been running since 2003. Details of past meetings can be found at the NBGGT archive.
To receive updates and announcement of our next meetings, please subscribe to our NBGGT mailing list.
We are very grateful for financial support from the London Mathematical Society, the Glasgow Mathematical Journal Learning and Research Support Fund, and of the Isaac Newton Institute - Heilbronn Institute for Mathematical Research Network Support Scheme.
NBGGT and AI. With the recent developments in AI-generated mathematics, many of us are now unsure how to interact at mathematical meetings, with the worry that someone may try to one-shot a question they mention with an LLM prompt. This is a complicated issue that our community as a whole is only starting to address. At our smaller NBGGT scale though, we will ask that for now our meetings remain AI-free events. This means concretely two things: We ask participants not to use LLMs during the entirety of the meeting. We also ask participants not to use as AI prompt afterwards any of the questions mentioned or raised during the meetings: during a talk, during the Q&A sessions, or during the coffee break / informal dinner. Just to be clear: Everyone is still absolutely welcome at our NBGGT events, regardless of their AI usage or AI opinions. And we are not asking anyone to share more than what they feel comfortable sharing in the current climate. But we do believe that one of the strengths of our NBGGT community is our ability to have friendly, informal, and open conversations with each other, which allows us to learn about interesting mathematical developments and about all the exciting research directions ahead. It is this very social and human aspect that we wish to preserve, especially for our more vulnerable early-career colleagues. With this, we hope that our NBGGT events can remain a (mathematically and socially) safe space for everyone.
Next meeting: Edinburgh, Wednesday 4 November 2026
Our next meeting will be in Edinburgh on Wednesday 4 November 2026, in room F.21 at 7 George Square, starting at 14:00. The speakers will be:- Francesco Fournier-Facio (Heriot-Watt), On quasimorphisms
- Igor Haladjian (Tours), Profinite rigidity of spherical type Artin groups
- Kim Ruane (Tufts), Morse accessibility