Interfacial flows are found in a vast spectrum of natural and engineered systems and they are often characterised by the presence of a wide range of different scales which are interacting with each other, usually in a non-trivial fashion. As a result, these systems may exhibit complex behaviour and generic features, such as chaotic motion, intermittency, or pattern formation and self-organisation. In some other cases the emergence of what is called collective (critical) phenomena might also be observed.

In this talk I will show several problems exhibiting these types of behaviour, including multiphase flows in disordered media, capillary flows in microengineered devices, and dissipative interfacial turbulence. We have developed a number of novel methodologies for the study of these systems which I will outline in the talk.