| After an introduction to the basic goals and notions of higher-dimensional birational geometry and the minimal model program, I will concentrate on the case of varieties of general type. By the seminal work of Birkar-Cascini-Hacon-McKernan (~2006) the minimal model program is known to work for these, so that every smooth projective variety of general type admits a minimal as well as a canonical model. Motivated by Riemann's Uniformisation Theorem in one complex variable, I will then describe approaches to higher-dimensional uniformisation theorems. Time permitting, at the end of my talk I will explain the proof of a recent result (with Kebekus, Peternell, and Taji) that establishes the Miyaoka-Yau Inequality (MYI) for minimal varieties of general type and characterises those varieties for which the MYI becomes an equality as quotients of the unit ball by a cocompact discrete subgroup of PSU(1, n). |