Mark Kisin University of Chicago Geometric deformations of modular Galois representations Friday 3rd September, 12:05-12:55pm, Carslaw 175. I will explain a result on the vanishing of a Selmer group for the adjoint of a modular form. Such results were first proved by Flach and Wiles. They can be motivated either by the philosopy of Deligne and Beilinson relating special values of L-functions and Selmer groups, or by the conjecture of Fontaine-Mazur which predicts which p-adic Galois representations come from geometry. I will explain this "philosophy" and give an application to deformation rings of Galois representations.