We prove two theorems about the Malcev Lie algebra associated to the Torelli group of a surface of genus g: Stably, it is Koszul and the kernel of the Johnson homomorphism consists only of trivial $\mathrm {Sp}_{2g}(\mathbb {Z})$-representations lying in the centre.

We discuss several versions of the Family Signature Theorem: in rational cohomology using ideas of Meyer, in $KO[\tfrac {1}{2}]$-theory using ideas of Sullivan, and finally in symmetric $L$-theory using ideas of Ranicki. Employing recent developments in Grothendieck–Witt theory, we give a quite complete analysis of the resulting invariants. As an application we prove that the signature is multiplicative modulo 4 for fibrations of oriented Poincaré complexes, generalizing a result of Hambleton, Korzeniewski and Ranicki, and discuss the multiplicativity of the de Rham invariant.

We construct a ring homomorphism comparing the tautological ring, fixing a point, of a closed smooth manifold with that of its stabilisation by S2a×S2b.

The Torelli group of $W_g = \#^g S^n \times S^n$ is the group of diffeomorphisms of $W_g$ fixing a disc that act trivially on $H_n(W_g;\mathbb{Z} )$. The rational cohomology groups of the Torelli group are representations of an arithmetic subgroup of $\text{Sp}_{2g}(\mathbb{Z} )$ or $\text{O}_{g,g}(\mathbb{Z} )$. In this article we prove that for $2n \geq 6$ and $g \geq 2$, they are in fact algebraic representations. Combined with previous work, this determines the rational cohomology of the Torelli group in a stable range. We further prove that the classifying space of the Torelli group is nilpotent.

We completely describe the algebraic part of the rational cohomology of the Torelli groups of the manifolds $\#^{g}S^{n}\times S^{n}$ relative to a disc in a stable range, for $2n\geqslant 6$. Our calculation is also valid for $2n=2$ assuming that the rational cohomology groups of these Torelli groups are finite-dimensional in a stable range.

We study tautological rings for high-dimensional manifolds, that is, for each smooth manifold $M$ the ring $R^{\ast }(M)$ of those characteristic classes of smooth fibre bundles with fibre $M$ which is generated by generalised Miller–Morita–Mumford classes. We completely describe these rings modulo nilpotent elements, when $M$ is a connected sum of copies of $S^{n}\times S^{n}$ for $n$ odd.

We study the cohomology of the space of immersed genus g surfaces in a simply-connected manifold. We compute the rational cohomology of this space in a stable range which goes to infinity with g. In fact, in this stable range we are also able to obtain information about torsion in the cohomology of this space, as long as we localise away from (g-1).