Abstract: A subgroup is said to be almost normal if it is commensurable
to all of its conjugates. Even though there may not be a well-defined
quotient group, there is still a well-defined quotient space that admits
an isometric action by the ambient group. We can deduce many geometric
and algebraic properties of the ambient group by examining this action.
In particular, we will use quotient spaces to prove a relative version
of Stallings-Swan theorem on groups of cohomological dimension one. We
also show that in many situations, quasi-isometries of the ambient group
induce quasi-isometries of the quotient space, which can be used to
classify such groups up to quasi-isometry.