PIMS-URegina Colloquium Series: Anna Cepek

We approach the embedding space of knots by examining configurations of finite subsets of S^1 and R^3. In the case of configurations of two point subsets, one can obtain the classic invariant called the linking number. Such a procedure can be generalized using the notion of stratified spaces. The goal of this talk is to explain this approach to knot theory and show how the linking number can be recovered from this more general procedure.