Providing a timely description of the present state of the art of moduli spaces of curves and
their geometry this volume is written in a way which will make it extremely useful both for
young people who want to approach this important field and also for established researchers
who will find references problems original expositions new viewpoints etc. The book
collects the lecture notes of a number of leading algebraic geometers and in particular
specialists in the field of moduli spaces of curves and their geometry. This is an important
subject in algebraic geometry and complex analysis which has seen spectacular developments in
recent decades with important applications to other parts of mathematics such as birational
geometry and enumerative geometry and to other sciences including physics. The themes treated
are classical but with a constant look to modern developments (see Cascini Debarre Farkas
and Sernesi's contributions) and include very new material such as Bridgeland stability (see
Macri's lecture notes) and tropical geometry (see Chan's lecture notes).
