It is well known that irreducible representations of the symmetric group are parameterized by partitions. There are also representations of the symmetric group corresponding to skew partitions, but they are reducible. Using ideas from topological quantum field theory, we extend the symmetric group action on skew partitions to an affine symmetric group action. Moreover, the skew partition representations are irreducible for the affine symmetric group action. Speaker(s): Daniel Barter (University of Michigan)