This volume presents the proceedings from the AMS-IMS-SIAM Summer Research Conference on Homotopy Methods in Algebraic Topology held at the University of Colorado (Boulder). The conference coincided with the sixtieth birthday of J. Peter May. An article is included reflecting his wide-ranging and influential contributions to the subject area. Other articles in the book discuss the ordinary, elliptic and real-oriented Adams spectral sequences, mapping class groups, configuration spaces, extended powers, operads, the telescope conjecture, $p$-compact groups, algebraic K theory, stable and unstable splittings, the calculus of functors, the $E_{infty}$ tensor product, and equivariant cohomology theories. The book offers a compendious source on modern aspects of homotopy theoretic methods in many algebraic settings.