The Locally Trivial Seminar

General Information

The Locally Trivial Seminar is a student seminar at the University of Toronto. The goal of the seminar is to provide a forum for informal collaborative talks given by seminar attendees on all things loosely related to algebraic topology. By loosely related we mean to include algebraic topology itself (of course), K-theory, derived algebraic geometry (or other related areas of algebraic geometry), differential topology, and the relevant ideas in geometric topology. The exact direction of the seminar is to be determined by the attendees.

We hope that by attending the seminar you gain a deeper understanding of the fields relating to algebraic topology and how they all fit together.

Attending & Speaking

Time & Location: Fridays 10:00-11:00 BA 6180.

To sign up to speak please rank your 3 favourite open slots in our schedule in an email to one of the organizers. In this email please include your proposed topic.

The expectation is that if you are regularly attending the seminar, you will at some point speak. Your talk doesn’t need to be polished or fully complete, just pick a topic that you find interesting. We especially encourage you to work through examples that you find have helped elucidate a complicated topic! We keep a list of past talks to help you get inspired.

Organizers

Jonathan Sejr Pedersen: jsejrp@math.toronto.edu

Sacha Goldman: sacha.goldman@mail.utoronto.ca

Mailing List

To sign up for weekly talk reminders, please email one of the organizers.

Current Schedule

Date Speaker Topic
Sep 19th 2025 Vicente Marin-Marquez An Application of the Cobordism Hypothesis
Sep 26th 2025 Alice Rolf Triality of $\mathrm{SO}(8)$
Oct 3rd 2025 Ismael Sierra The Goncharov Program via $E_\infty$-Homology of General Linear Groups
Oct 10th 2025 Mahdi Rafiei $TC(\mathbb F _p)$
Oct 17th 2025 Herng Yi Cheng Mod $p$ Differential Forms and Steenrod Operations
Oct 24th 2025 Aidan Lindberg Hochschild Homology of Derived Stacks
Oct 31st 2025 Reading Week None
Nov 7th 2025 Jonathan Sejr Pedersen Signatures of Manifolds I
Nov 14th 2025 Sacha Goldman Signatures of Manifolds II
Nov 21st 2025 Brian Shin Homotopies in Algebraic Geometry
Nov 28th 2025 Grisha Taroyan How to Find God The Continuum Hypothesis

Historical Schedule

Winter 2025

Date Speaker Topic
Apr 1st 2025 Ismael Sierra Can a Finite p-group Act Without Fixed Points?
Mar 25th 2025 Jonathan Sejr Pedersen Are Spectra Cohomology Theories?
Mar 18th 2025 Sacha Goldman Local Systems and Simple Homotopy Theory (Notes)
Mar 11th 2025 Mahdi Rafiei $S_\bullet$-construction
Mar 4th 2025 Elden Elmanto Arithmetic and Homotopy Theory
Feb 25th 2025 Matt Scalamandre Bad Simplex Arguments (Notes)
Feb 18th 2025 Reading Week None
Feb 11th 2025 Ismael Sierra Spectral Sequences in Practice
Feb 4th 2025 Vicente Marin-Marquez Some Applications of the Fundamental Pro-group
Jan 28th 2025 Charlie Wu Special Representations of Surface Groups (Notes)
Jan 21st 2025 Jonathan Sejr Pedersen The Universal Utility of Classifying Spaces