On the 6th November, ESRI’s Dr. Kim Allen and  the Social Action & Research Foundation (SARF) will co-host an event as part of the Economic and Social Research Council’s (ESRC) annual ‘Festival of Social Sciences’. Entitled Does ‘Poverty Porn’ undermine the Welfare State?  this event will focus on the relationship between welfare policy, public attitudes and media representations of poverty. It will be informed by recent debates about so-called ‘poverty porn’ (such as Channel 4’s ‘Benefits Street’), which has been referenced by coalition politicians as evidence for the need for welfare reform. These programmes have raised questions about the impact of stigmatising media portrayals of poverty on government policy and public attitudes towards welfare. This public event will provide an opportunity to bring together leading academics, policy makers, journalists and people from the wider community to debate these issues. The event builds on a recent collection of articles published in ‘Sociological Research online’ on representations of the poor and the politics of welfare reform, including a co-authored article by Kim Allen on the gender politics of austerity (http://www.socresonline.org.uk/19/3/2.html)