We study the $E_2$ -algebra $\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}:= \coprod _{g\geqslant 0}\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{g,1}$ consisting of free loop spaces of moduli spaces of Riemann surfaces with one parametrised boundary component, and compute the homotopy type of the group completion $\Omega B\Lambda \mathfrak {M}_{*,1}$ : it is the product of $\Omega ^{\infty }\mathbf {MTSO}(2)$ with a certain free $\Omega ^{\infty }$ -space depending on the family of all boundary-irreducible mapping classes in all mapping class groups $\Gamma _{g,n}$ with $g\geqslant 0$ and $n\geqslant 1$ .

To a Lie groupoid over a compact base $M$, the associated group of bisection is an (infinite-dimensional) Lie group. Moreover, under certain circumstances one can reconstruct the Lie groupoid from its Lie group of bisections. In the present article we consider functorial aspects of these construction principles. The first observation is that this procedure is functorial (for morphisms fixing $M$). Moreover, it gives rise to an adjunction between the category of Lie groupoids over $M$ and the category of Lie groups acting on $M$. In the last section we then show how to promote this adjunction to almost an equivalence of categories.

We present a general method based on the van Kampen theorem for computing the fundamental group of the total space in certain Steenrod bundles. The method is applied to mapping spaces and Grassmann bundles.