Perverse sheaves on semi-abelian varieties -- a survey of properties and applications

We survey recent developments in the study of perverse sheaves on semi-abelian varieties. As concrete applications, we discuss various obstructions on the homotopy type of complex algebraic manifolds (expressed in terms of their cohomology jump loci), homological duality properties of complex algebraic manifolds, as well as new topological characterizations of semi-abelian varieties.