Dr Natalie Wreyford

Natalie Wreyford is a Lecturer in Culture, Media and Creative Industries and joined King’s full time in 2021.

Prior to this, Natalie was lead researcher and co-author of Creative Majority: a report for the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Creative Diversity on ‘What Works’ to support, encourage and improve equality, diversity and inclusion in the creative sector. She also 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.

Natalie was the Research Fellow on the AHRC-funded Calling the Shots: Women and contemporary UK film culture at the University of Southampton for three years. Her book Gender Inequality in Screenwriting Work is published by Palgrave Macmillan.

Prior to becoming an academic, Natalie worked for many years in the UK’s film industry, including as Senior Development Executive at the UK Film Council and Granada Film.

Research Interests

• Inequalities and injustice in the cultural and creative industries
• Film industry, film production, immersive productions and film distribution
• Screenwriting
• Creative labour and creative identities
• Motherhood and work

Natalie is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work is informed by many years working in the UK’s creative industries. Her interests are predominantly at the intersection of gender, inequalities, creative industries, creative labour and cultural studies.

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 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 Indpendent, on BBC Radio, Den of Geek, the Herald Scotland and the Irish Examiner. She was profiled by Wellwoodwomen here, and successfully campaigned to have Leia merchandise produced in Disney stores.

 

Publications

• “Could you hire someone female or from an ethnic minority?” Being both: black, Asian and other minority women working in British film production. N Wreyford, S Cobb. In Nwonka, C and Saha, A (ed) (2020) Black Film British Cinema II. London: Goldsmiths Publishing/MIT Press/Institute of Contemporary Arts
• Gender Inequality in Screenwriting Work N Wreyford (2018). Palgrave Macmillan
• Data and Responsibility: Towards a Feminist Methodology for Producing Historical Data on Women in the Contemporary UK Film Industry N Wreyford, S Cobb (2017).Feminist Media Histories 3 (3), 107-132
• Birds of a feather: Informal recruitment practices and gendered outcomes for screenwriting work in the UK film industry N Wreyford (2015) The Sociological Review 63, 84-96
• The Real Cost of Childcare: Motherhood and Flexible Creative Labour in the UK Film Industry N Wreyford (2013) Studies in the Maternal 5 (2)