A variety of introductory articles is provided on a wide range of topics, including variational problems on curves and surfaces with anisotropic curvature. Experts in the fields of Riemannian, Lorentzian and contact geometry present  state-of-the-art reviews of their topics. The contributions are written on a graduate level and contain  extended bibliographies. The ten chapters are the result of various doctoral courses which were held in 2009 and 2010 at universities in Leuven, Serbia, Romania and Spain.