String backgrounds with a local torus fibration such as T-folds are naturally formulated in a doubled formalism in which the torus fibres are doubled to include dual coordinates conjugate to winding number. Here we formulate and explore a generalisation of this construction in which all coordinates are doubled, so that the doubled space is a twisted torus, i.e. a compact space constructed from identifying a group manifold under a discrete subgroup. This incorporates reductions with duality twists, T-folds and a class of flux compactifications, together with the non-geometric backgrounds expected to arise from these through T-duality. It also incorporates backgrounds that are not even locally geometric, and suggests a generalisation of T-duality to a more general context. We discuss the effective field theory arising from such an internal sector, give a world-sheet sigma model formulation of string theory on such backgrounds and illustrate our discussion with detailed examples.

Global aspects of Scherk-Schwarz dimensional reduction are discussed and it is shown that it can usually be viewed as arising from a compactification on the compact space obtained by identifying a (possibly non-compact) group manifold G under a discrete subgroup Γ, followed by a truncation. This allows a generalisation of Scherk-Schwarz reductions to string theory or M-theory as compactifications on G/Γ, but only in those cases in which there is a suitable discrete subgroup of G. We analyse such compactifications with flux and investigate the gauge symmetry and its spontaneous breaking. We discuss the covariance under O(d, d), where d is the dimension of the group G, and the relation to reductions with duality twists. The compactified theories promote a subgroup of the O(d, d) that would arise from a toroidal reduction to a gauge symmetry, and we discuss the interplay between the gauge symmetry and the O(d, d, Z) T-duality group, suggesting the role that T-duality should play in such compactifications.

String compactifications with T-duality twists are revisited and the gauge algebra of the dimensionally reduced theories calculated. These reductions can be viewed as string theory on T-fold backgrounds, and can be formulated in a 'doubled space' in which each circle is supplemented by a T-dual circle to construct a geometry which is a doubled torus bundle over a circle. We discuss a conjectured extension to include T-duality on the base circle, and propose the introduction of a dual base coordinate, to give a doubled space which is locally the group manifold of the gauge group. Special cases include those in which the doubled group is a Drinfel'd double. This gives a framework to discuss backgrounds that are not even locally geometric.

We find the bosonic sector of the gauged supergravities that are obtained from 11dimensional supergravity by Scherk-Schwarz dimensional reduction with flux to any dimension D. We show that, if certain obstructions are absent, the Scherk-Schwarz ansatz for a finite set of D-dimensional fields can be extended to a full compactification of M-theory, including an infinite tower of Kaluza-Klein fields. The internal space is obtained from a group manifold (which may be non-compact) by a discrete identification. We discuss the symmetry algebra and the symmetry breaking patterns and illustrate these with particular examples. We discuss the action of U-duality on these theories in terms of symmetries of the D-dimensional supergravity, and argue that in general it will take geometric flux compactifications to M-theory on non-geometric backgrounds, such as U-folds with U-duality transition functions.