"A Slave in Scotland", Investigative Reporter, The Guardian/Observer
Reporter, "Meta's new parental tools will not protect vulnerable children online", The Guardian
"The Trap" Reporter/Producer/Director, The Guardian, Guardian Documentaries
Give me shelter: protecting trafficked children in the US - documentary
"How US Traffickers Recruit Jailed Women for Prostitution", Investigative Reporter, The Guardian
Investigative Reporter, "How Facebook and Instagram Become Marketplaces for Child Sex Trafficking", The Guardian Long Read
Editor, "How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres’ environmental toll"
"Trump Tries a New Campaign Tack: Small Scale," Reporter, The New York Times
Investigative Reporter, "America's Outcasts: The Women Trapped in a Cruel Cycle of Exploitation," The Guardian
Investigative Reporter, "The lawyer whose sex trafficking case against Instagram could spell trouble for Big Tech", The Guardian
"3,000 children enslaved in Britain after being trafficked from Vietnam", Reporter/Filmmaer, The Observer on Sunday (Guardian)
‘Emotionally, I’m shattered’: How an Irish professor lost his €1m retirement nest egg to scammers
"Madagascar, State of Denial", Reporter/Producer, People & Power, Al Jazeera English
Documentary, Director/Producer, The Great Olympic Greenwash, Al Jazeera English
Reporter, "US states move to stop prisons charging inmates for reading and video calls", The Guardian
Saving Britain's Pearls - Al Jazeera Earthrise
Investment scammers slip through cracks in EU Big Tech law
‘I’ll have to tell my husband I’ve lost all our money’: Calls reveal trauma of Irish scam victims
Reporter, "World’s garment workers face ruin as fashion brands refuse to pay $16bn" 
Mei-Ling McNamara

About

Guardian Doc Showcase, London @ Curzon, Bloomsbury

We are thrilled to have been nominated for the 2026 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism for our Investigate Europe exposé: “How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres’ environmental toll”. Ten investigations were shortlisted from a record 344 entries. The award ceremony will take place in Strasbourgh on October 21, 2026. 

InvestigatiVe Journalist
DOC Filmmaker
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

The Guardian held its annual documentary showcase at Bertha DocHouse at the Curzon Theatre in Bloomsbury in February 2026. Our documentary “Give Me Shelter” was featured alongside a slate of excellent films. Click here to watch the panel discussion.

Our investigation “How Facebook and Instagram Became Marketplaces for Child Sex Trafficking” (Guardian, 2023) has been cited as one of the critical evidential news sources from the New Mexico Attorney General into the landmark trial verdict in March of the State of New Mexico vs. Meta Platforms Inc.

‍ ‍‍ ‍News

Our Guardian documentary, “Give Me Shelter” (Tom Silverstone (Dir), Laurence Topham (Ed/EP) and Mei-Ling McNamara (Journalist/Producer) was nominated for an Emmy award! The Documentary Awards took place at the Jazz in Lincoln Center on 28 May, 2026. Viewers can watch it streamed live on TheEmmys.TV and The Emmys apps.

Mei-Ling McNamara is an Emmy-nominated investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, the Guardian (Guardian News, Guardian Documentaries, Guardian Long Read, Guardian Magazine, Guardian Weekend), Al Jazeera English (People & Power, Earthrise), CNN International, Channel 4 (Unreported World), PBS Wide Angle, the BBC, The Irish Times and The Observer (UK), among others.

For over twenty years her journalism has focused on interrogating systems of power, including covering topics on modern-day slavery and human trafficking, labour exploitation, tech inequality, environmental crimes and criminal justice. Her reporting has included long-form narrative journalism, print and radio features, live news production, current affairs productions, multimedia investigative projects and long-form documentaries. As well as working as a journalist and filmmaker, she is the editorial director of Investigate Europe, an award-winning consortium of investigative reporters publishing cross-border investigations in Europe and beyond. Her documentary and print work has received numerous awards and nominations, including the Emmy Awards, the Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize for Journalism, the Grierson Awards (British Documentary Awards), the Royal Television Society Awards, the Amnesty International Awards, the International Documentary Association awards, the DIG awards, and the Anti-Slavery Day Awards. She holds a PhD in Transdisciplinary Documentary Film from The University of Edinburgh, an MA in Journalism from Goldsmiths, University of London, an MA in American Poetry in Prose from the University of Essex, and a BA in English from the University of California, Davis.