The Sheila McKechnie Foundation (SMK) - the only UK charity that connects, informs and supports campaigners - invites you to a special talk and networking event.

Be inspired by cutting edge research from Sheffield University. Leading academic Danny Dorling presents his findings about the emerging poverty and inequality challenges facing London.

Stay on to have a drink and meet and network with other campaigners trying to find new and innovative solutions to poverty and inequality in London and across the UK.

'Megacity London - ever growing, ever more unequal'
Prof Danny Dorling, Dr Ben Hennig

What is it about London? Population growth is slowing across most of Europe - people are having fewer children and, it could be argued, steps are being taken to try to reduce social inequalities.

But London is unusual. London is becoming more youthful. The middle aged and those who are poor, but not desperately poor, are being squeezed out. Graduates from the rest of Britain and the rest of the world flow in ever greater numbers and require ever higher degrees of optimism. Many fail to achieve their aspirations. Above them a few are becoming ever richer. Below them, as social housing becomes too expensive for huge numbers of lowly paid families and many leave, a new poor may be growing, less well documented, less well protected, with even less to lose. Another future is possible.

Biographies

"Danny Dorling is that rare university professor: expert, politically engaged and able to explain simply why his subject matters." The Guardian, April 2010

Danny Dorling is a Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield. He went to various schools in Oxford and to University in Newcastle upon Tyne. He has worked in Newcastle, Bristol, Leeds and New Zealand. With a group of colleagues he helped create the website www.worldmapper.org which shows who has most and least in the world.

Much of Danny’s work is available open access (see www.dannydorling.org). His work concerns issues of housing, health, employment, education and poverty. His recent books include, co-authored texts "The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the way we live" and "Bankrupt Britain: an atlas of social change".  Recent sole authored books include: "Injustice: why social inequalities persist”; "So you think you know about Britain"; “Fair Play”; and "The no-nonsense guide to equality and the visualization of social spatial structure".

Ben Hennig graduated in Geography from the University of Cologne (Germany). After working as a lecturer in Human and Urban Geography in Cologne he joined the Social and Spatial Inequalities research group at the University of Sheffield (United Kingdom) in 2008 where he completed his PhD in 2011 with research on novel cartographic techniques. He continues his work in Sheffield as a research associate at the Geography Department working on geospatial data analysis and geovisualisation. See more at http://www.viewsoftheworld.net.