The volume is a collection of 20 refereed articles written in connection with lectures presented at the 12th International Conference on Finite Fields and Their Applications ('Fq12') at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY in July 2015. Finite fields are central to modern cryptography and secure digital communication, and hence must evolve rapidly to keep pace with new technologies. Topics in this volume include cryptography, coding theory, structure of finite fields, algorithms, curves over finite fields, and further applications.Contributors will include: Antoine Joux (Fondation Partenariale de l'UPMC, France); Gary Mullen (Penn State University, USA); Gohar Kyureghyan (Otto-von-Guericke Universitat, Germany); Gary McGuire (University College Dublin, Ireland); Michel Lavrauw (Universita degli Studi di Padova, Italy); Kirsten Eisentraeger (Penn State University, USA); Renate Scheidler (University of Calgary, Canada); Michael Zieve (University of Michigan, USA).

Galois geometry is the theory that deals with substructures living in projective spaces over finite fields, also called Galois fields. This collected work presents current research topics in Galois geometry, and their applications. Presented topics include classical objects, blocking sets and caps in projective spaces, substructures in finite classical polar spaces, the polynomial method in Galois geometry, finite semifields, links between Galois geometry and coding theory, as well as links between Galois geometry and cryptography.