C01 Automorphisms and embeddings of manifolds

This project concerns the homotopical properties of spaces of smooth and topological automorphisms of manifolds, their classifying spaces and spaces of smooth and topological embeddings of manifolds. Known characteristic classes for manifold bundles will play an important role. It is conceivable that new ones will be constructed. The action of automorphisms and embeddings on finite subsets of manifolds, more precisely on the configuration category of a manifold, will be exploited.