Group Theory is nowadays a lively branch of Mathematics, and in the last few years we have seen both new areas coming into play, and traditional areas taking new impetus with interesting problems and applications.

The goal of the international meeting “New Trends in Group Theory. Castro Urdiales 2011” is to give an account of the state of the art in four very active areas in group theory, including the main open problems, thus providing the participants with the grounds to do research in these areas. There will be one day devoted to each of the following fields: fusion systems, representation zeta functions, word problems, and Golod-Shafarevich groups. The meeting will consist of expository talks by leading mathematicians in those fields, contributed talks and a poster session. It is open to all kind of participants, but young researchers will be especially encouraged to participate.