The study of diffeomorphism and homeomorphism groups of manifolds is intimately tied to the study of foliations, and some of the most prominent open problems in the area such as the Haefliger–Thurston conjecture and the L-space conjecture are concerned with the connections between these two subjects.

In the past decade, there has been much progress on both fronts including dynamics of group actions on manifolds and the regularity of actions and foliations, algebraic properties of diffeomorphism groups, invariants of foliations, the Mather–Thurston homology equivalence, the group cohomology of diffeo-morphism groups and their boundedness properties, understanding the topology of spaces of foliations, representation of surface groups into diffeomorphism groups of the circle, and actions of 3-manifold groups on 1-manifolds via taut foliations.

The goal of the conference is to bring together international experts and young researchers working in foliations theory, diffeomorphism groups, 3-manifold topology, bounded cohomology, and 1-dimensional dynamics to share their insights and expertise and to foster collaborations that will lead to progress on important problems in both areas. Furthermore, to navigate the impact of the recent advances in each of these areas on the others, there will be minicourses to introduce young researchers to some of the major recent advances in these areas and there will be problem sessions and informal learning groups to come up with new problems within the scope of current techniques and long term projects between the subfields.