This reading course will cover material from the following papers:

• Peter Scott and Terry Wall, Topological methods in group theory, Homological Group Theory (C.T.C. Wall, ed.), LMS Lecture Note Series, vol 36, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 137-203
• Graham A. Niblo, A geometric proof of Stallings' theorem, Geom. Dedicata 105 (2004), 61-76
• M. J. Dunwoody, The accessibility of finitely presented groups, Invent. Math. 81 (1985), 449-457