  In this short survey of the applications of wide-field, multi-object
spectroscopy to galaxy evolution, large-scale structure and cosmology, I
interleave summaries of the general goals and state of play in these fields
with specific examples based on my own recent work. I first briefly review the
goals and figures of merit for current and future redshift surveys, before
examining some recent results from deep surveys in the field, cluster redshift
surveys and surveys of large scale structure. I take a look beyond redshift
surveys to other probes of galaxy evolution before concluding with a discussion
of the future prospects for such studies using the next generation of
wide-field, multi-object spectrographs on large telescopes.
