Birational geometry of quiver varieties

In this talk I will report on joint work in progress with A. Craw and T. Schedler on the birational geometry of quiver varieties. We give an explicit local description of the birational transformations that occur under variation of GIT for quiver varieties. The main consequence of this local picture is that one can show that all Q-factorial terminalizations of quiver varieties (excluding the (2,2) case) can be obtained by VGIT. I will try to explain what our results mean in two concrete classes of examples. Namely, for framed affine Dynkin quivers (corresponding to wreath product quotient singularities) and star shape quivers (corresponding to hyperpolygon spaces).