Speaker: Biagio Lucini (University of Swansea) Title: The spectrum of SU(N) gauge theories at large N Abstract: It has been known for a long time that large-N methods can give invaluable insights into non-perturbative phenomena such as confinement. Lattice techniques can be used to compute quantities at large N. In this talk, I review some recent large-N lattice results for the spectrum of SU(N) gauge theories (both in the glueball and in the mesonic sector) and discuss their implications for our understanding of non-perturbative QCD. Particular attention will be devoted to technical improvements that allows for a more robust determinations of quantities in the continuum limit by mitigating the problem of critical slowing down of topological modes as the lattice spacing goes to zero.