Andrew Brooke-Taylor (University of Leeds)

Borel reducibility is a framework for comparing the complexities of different equivalence relations, and it has been used to great effect showing that various old classification programmes were impossible tasks. However, these days classification maps are generally expected to be functorial, which the classical Borel reducibility framework takes no account of. After going through preliminaries of the classical set-up, I will present a natural framework of Borel categories and functorial Borel reducibility that remedies this oversight. Notably, many examples of classes of structures that were known to be universal in a Borel reducibility sense - Borel complete - are not universal for our functorial version. I'll give many examples, including new ones for the old hands who've seen me talk about this stuff before. This is joint work with Filippo Calderoni.