Representations of braid groups via conjugation actions on congruence   subgroups
  We construct two families of representations of the braid group $B_n$ by considering conjugation actions on congruence subgroups of $GL_{n-1}(Z[t^{\pm 1},q^{\pm 1}])$. We show that many of these representations are faithful modulo the center of $B_n$. 
Kevin P. Knudson