Dr. Natalie Wreyford was a full-time Research Fellow on Calling the Shots.
Natalie’s background is as a Senior Development Executive in the British film industry, most notably at the UK Film Council where she commissioned one of the first reports into gender inequality in film.
She has completed a PhD at King’s College London entitled The Gendered Contexts of Screenwriting: Informal Recruitment and Judgments of Taste and Talent in the UK Film Industry. Her thesis investigates the underlying causes of continued gender inequality in film screenwriting.
Natalie’s research interests are centred on access to work and equality of opportunity in the creative industries with a particular focus on gender and film. She is concerned with the mechanisms that uphold inequality and the cultural impact of a lack of diverse creative voices. Her work has been published in The Sociological Review and in the anthology Gender and Creative Labour, eds. Bridget Conor, Ros Gill and Stephanie Taylor (Wiley-Blackwell, 2015). Publications include “Birds of a feather: informal recruitment practices and gendered outcomes for screenwriting work in the UK film industry” and “The Real Cost of Childcare: Motherhood and Flexible Creative Labour in the UK Film Industry”.
Natalie has read, advised on and script edited hundreds of film scripts and worked with many screenwriters, from Academy Award-winners to those trying to get their first break. She was previously the external examiner for the MA in Screenwriting at Goldsmiths. Natalie has given public talks and contributed to panels about women and film at Directors UK, Cannes Film Festival, The London Feminist Film Festival, The Hay Literature Festival and the Screenwriters Festival.
After completing her research with the Calling the Shots, Natalie went on to work as a Research Affiliate on A Vision for Women in VR for University of Nottingham and King’s College London. She recently and published this book on Gender Inequality in Screenwriting https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783319957319
Outside of her work, Natalie is an active campaigner for gender neutral toys, and a member of Raising Films, an organization striving to improve the situation of parents in the film industry, particularly mothers. She is a committee member and the social media officer for the Women’s Film and Television History Network, part of the AHRC’s Improving Cultural Work network and a voting member of BAFTA.
Calling the Shots 