  We present the mini-proceedings of the workshop on ``Parton fragmentation in
the vacuum and in the medium'' held at the European Centre for Theoretical
Studies in Nuclear Physics and Related Areas (ECT*, Trento) in February 2008.
The workshop gathered both theorists and experimentalists to discuss the
current status of investigations of quark and gluon fragmentation into hadrons
at different accelerator facilities (LEP, B-factories, JLab, HERA, RHIC, and
Tevatron) as well as preparations for extension of these studies at the LHC.
The main physics topics covered were: (i) light-quark and gluon fragmentation
in the vacuum including theoretical (global fits analyses and MLLA) and
experimental (data from e+e-, p-p, e-p collisions) aspects, (ii) strange and
heavy-quark fragmentation, (iii) parton fragmentation in cold QCD matter
(nuclear DIS), and (iv) medium-modified fragmentation in hot and dense QCD
matter (high-energy nucleus-nucleus collisions). These mini-proceedings consist
of an introduction and short summaries of the talks presented at the meeting.
