A survey on spaces of homomorphisms to Lie groups
  The purpose of this article is to give an exposition of topological properties of spaces of homomorphisms from certain finitely generated discrete groups to Lie groups $G$, and to describe their connections to classical representation theory, as well as other structures. Various properties are given when $G$ is replaced by a small category, or the discrete group is given by a right-angled Artin group. 
Frederick R. Cohen, Mentor Stafa
math.AT