Dr Natalie Wreyford’s research critically explores inequality within creative labour markets, and interrogates how ideas of talent, value, and merit are constructed and sustained across creative sectors, influencing who is permitted, recognised and remunerated as a creative worker. Prior to becoming an academic, Natalie worked in the UK’s film and television industries in key roles within both public and large private sector organisations.

Natalie has played a key role on large-scale collaborative projects addressing diversity and inclusion across the wider creative economy. This includes high-profile research conducted in partnership with the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Creative Diversity, with input from industry stakeholders such as Netflix and NBCUniversal, whose findings have directly informed policy discussions and creative sector interventions. Natalie was the lead researcher and author of Creative Majority (2021), which laid out ‘What Works’ to promote equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) in the UK’s creative economy. She also co-wrote Making the Creative Majority (2023), which examines EDI in pathways into creative work through higher education.

Natalie co-authored Locked Down and Locked Out: The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on mothers working in the UK television industry with BECTU, Share My Telly Job and the University of Nottingham. She was commissioned to write the report “No One Left Behind: Identifying Film and Television Workers Most at Risk of Hardship as a Result of Covid-19” with Shelley Cobb for the UK Film and TV Charity. Natalie was the Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded Calling the Shots: Women and contemporary UK film culture at the University of Southampton.

Natalie is widely published on inequalities in the creative industries, including her book Gender Inequality in Screenwriting Work (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). A key chapter of this: ‘That’s a Chick’s Movie!: How Women Are Excluded from Screenwriting Work’ was recently published in The Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies (2023).

Research interests and PhD supervision

• Inequalities, taste and value in the cultural and creative industries
• Film industry, screenwriting, production, development and distribution
• Creative work, intermediaries, gatekeeping, nepotism and recruitment
• Motherhood, care and work
• Bourdieusian approaches to culture and creative industries

Teaching

Natalie is passionate about teaching and improving the student experience inside and outside the classroom. Her role at CMCI includes project management and she teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate modules. Natalie set up and runs the Teaching Innovation Labs, which bring colleagues together to learn and discuss ways to improve their teaching.

Expertise and public engagement

Natalie has presented her work at international academic conferences including MeCCSA SCMS, Screen, CAMEo and Work, Gender and Organisations. She has also been an invited speaker at Women in Film and Television, Directors UK, The Cannes Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Edinburgh Television Festival, the Lithuanian Film Centre, the National Film and Television School, Underwire Festival and the London Feminist Film Festival, among many. Her research has appeared in The Guardian, The Independent, on BBC Radio, Den of Geek, the Herald Scotland and the Irish Examiner. She was profiled by Wellywood Women, and successfully campaigned to have Princess Leia merchandise produced in Disney stores.

Selected publications

• Wreyford, N., Newsinger J., Kennedy, H. & Aust, r. 2023 Locked down and locked out: mothers and UKTV work during the COVID-19 pandemic. Feminist Media Studies.
• Comunian, R., Dent, T., O’Brien, D. & Wreyford, N. Making the Creative Majority: An APPG for Creative Diversity report on ‘What Works’ to support diversity and inclusion in creative education and the talent pipeline, with a focus on the 16+ age category.
• Wreyford, N. 2023 “That’s a Chick’s Movie!”: How Women are Excluded from Screenwriting Work. In The Palgrave Handbook of Screenwriting Studies Russo, P., Davies, R. and Tieber, C. (eds.) Palgrave Macmillan, p.507-526.
• Wreyford, N., Dent, T. and O'Brien, D., 2021. Creative Majority: An APPG for Creative Diversity report on ‘What Works’ to support, encourage and improve equality, diversity and inclusion in the creative sector: A report for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Creative Diversity.
• Cobb, S. and Wreyford, N.L., 2021. ‘“Could you hire someone female or from an ethnic minority?” Being both: black, Asian and other minority women working in British film production’ in Nwonka, CJ and A. Saha (eds) Black Film British Cinema II. London: Goldsmiths Publishing/MIT Press/Institute of Contemporary Arts.