ABSTRACT
The panel session of the conference was devoted to an open discussion about the future of poverty research. Four people formed a panel and each were asked to introduce their ideas very briefly. They are John Hills, Jonathan Bradshaw, Ruth Lister, and Janet Lewis. This chapter is based on their notes and are thus presented a good deal less formally than is normal in an academic text. The poverty research has been of the snapshot variety. One of the most important developments has been the construction of new data sources that allow us to look at what happens over time to people who experience poverty. In relation to the wider society is symptomatic of how poverty research has typically constructed poor people as passive victims, lacking agency, without views of their own and able only to testify to the impact of poverty on their lives.
