Speaker:Shannon Ezzat Institution: Dept. Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury Title: Representation Growth - A Gentle Introduction Abstract: Representation growth is a way of studying infinite groups by counting the number of irreducible representations into n by n matrices (not necessarily knowing what they are, but just knowing how many exist. In this primer I will give a general, non-technical overview of representation growth, especially in the case of a certain family of groups called nilpotent groups. This was the subject of my recently completed PhD thesis.