The articles in these proceedings provide up-to-date reviews of the present understanding of several important issues concerning the dynamics of space and astrophysical plasmas. They discuss observational results, asymptotic analyses and numerical simulations of topics such as plasma instabilities, shock dynamics, turbulence, plasma heating and particle acceleration, both in the heliosphere where very accurate data are provided by satellite in situ measurements, and in more distant astrophysical objects. Most of the articles include a significant introductory material and an extended bibliography.