Dear All, We are delighted to present the MaPSS Seminar topic of Monday 29/05; please see the abstract below. **This Semester the Seminar will always run on Monday, at 5:00pm in 535A** Following the talk, there will be pizza on offer. Speaker: Joel Gibson (Sydney University) Title: A different approach to representations of the symmetric group Abstract: The representation theory of the symmetric group is closely connected to the combinatorics of Young tableaux, however the usual way in which this is realised can seem unnatural. The aim of this talk is to present a more recent approach to the subject by Okounkov and Vershik, which pays close attention to the structure of the nested group algebras \(\mathbb{C}S_{n} \subseteq \mathbb{C}S_{n + 1} \) and the restriction of \(S_{n+1}\)-representations to \(S_n\). By constructing an extremely nice basis of any irreducible representation of \(S_n\), along with a corresponding diagonal subalgebra of \(\mathbb{C}S_n\), we will be able to "do weight theory" to a representation, from which the connection with Young tableaux will emerge naturally. Supervisors, please encourage your students to attend. Thanks, MaPSS Organisers