Book excerpt: This book contains the papers presented at a meeting sponsored by the Colloid and Interface Science Group of the Faraday Division, Royal Society of Chemistry, which was held at Wills Hall, University of Bristol from the 14th - 16th April 1997. The pur pose of the meeting, which was entitled Colloidal Dispersions, was to discuss the subject of concentrated colloidal systems including, dispersions, emulsions and powders, in order to emphasize recent advances in experimental and theoretical understanding of these systems and how these advances could be applied to practical utitisation in the wide range of industries which are involved with colloidal systems. The papers presented at the meeting were given by the principal participants in a 5 year project on Colloid Technology, which started on the 1st August 1992, and was funded by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) of the U.K. and a consortium of industries which was composed of ICI, Schlumberger, Unilever and Zeneca. The academic centres involved were, the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh and Imperial College, London. Each of the papers published in this volume formed the focus for a discussion on that topic so that each subject was discussed in so me depth by the participants. J ean Proctor and Meg Staff have been tremendously helpful as secretaries at Bristol and Cambridge respectively throughout the project. Also, their help with the various meetings and with the production of this volume was invaluable. We thank them most warmly for their very able assistance.