Reaction dynamics of light nuclei around the coulomb barrier

The reaction dynamics of collisions involving halo or weakly bound nuclei, at energies around the Coulomb barrier, can be strongly affected by the structure of the colliding nuclei. Very strong entrance channel effects have been observed on various reaction processes such as, elastic scattering, fusion and direct reactions, when comparing collisions induced by halo nuclei with the ones induced on the same target by their cores. Collisions induced by the stable weakly bound nuclei ⁶Li, ⁷Li show also some peculiarities in comparison to the ones induced by well bound nuclei, such as absence of usual threshold anomaly in the optical potential and strong competition of complete fusion with incomplete fusion and transfer in the heavy residue production cross-sections. In this contribution an overview of our present understanding of these topics will be given. (author)