Natalie Wood

Natalie Wood received her BA and MA from the University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau, NZ. At the University of Manchester her ESRC funded research project titled "Leisure Apsirations, Play and the Production of Poverty in the Entertainment Industry of Blackpool" asks how workers of the entertainment industry understand, narrate, and perform their own leisure aspirations. At the intersection of post- industrial Britain and political economy, this research explores what the potential of play might be in exploring how the body performs or contests these narratives of both ‘left-behindness’ in post-industrial Britain, as well as the current incantation of economic decline; ‘the cost of living crisis’.

She is the author of The Cost of Living Crisis: Temporality, Provisioning and Austerity in a Northern English City (2025). 

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