Hyperbolic metrics on surfaces with boundary

We discuss an alternative approach to the uniformisation problem on surfaces with boundary by representing conformal structures on surfaces $M$ of general type by hyperbolic metrics with boundary curves of constant positive geodesic curvature. In contrast to existing approaches to this problem, the boundary curves of our surfaces $(M,g)$ cannot collapse as the conformal structure degenerates which is important in applications in which $(M,g)$ serves as domain of a PDE with boundary conditions.