Florian Schwarz

Title: Introduction to equivalences between bicategories and 2-categories
Abstract: This is part four of our series of introductory talks on bicategories. This time we will be considering different ways in which bicategories can be considered to be equivalent. While sets are considered “the same” when they are isomorphic, an equivalence of categories (the right way of “same-ness” for categories) can be seen as being isomorphic up to isomorphisms. Analogously we will see that two bicategories are biequivalent if they are isomorphic up to isomorphisms up to isomorphisms. In practice it is often easier to check biequivalence using the Whitehead theorem, which I will present and apply to examples.