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About Catriona Gold

Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London. She is currently researching the US Passport Office's role in governing Cold War travel, and broadly interested in questions of security, surveillance and mobility.


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NBN Episodes hosted by Catriona:

Psychology July 23, 2023

The Muslim, State and Mind

Psychology in Times of Islamophobia

Tarek Younis

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Mental health is positioned as the cure-all for society’s discontents, from pandemics to terrorism. But psychology and psychiatry are not apolitical, and neither are Muslims. This book unpacks where the …
Women's History July 2, 2023

Without Children

The Long History of Not Being a Mother

Peggy O'Donnell Heffington

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Listen:
In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless …
General History May 8, 2023

When the Smoke Cleared

The 1968 Rebellion and the Unfinished Battle for Civil Rights in the Nation's Capital

Kyla Sommers

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In April 1968, following the murder of Martin Luther King Jr., a wave of uprisings swept across America. None was more visible—or resulted in more property damage, arrests, or federal …
Critical Theory May 5, 2023

What Comes After Entanglement?

Activism, Anthropocentrism, and an Ethics of Exclusion

Eva Haifa Giraud

Hosted by Catriona Gold
By foregrounding the ways that human existence is bound together with the lives of other entities, contemporary cultural theorists have sought to move beyond an anthropocentric worldview. Yet as Eva …
Critical Theory January 18, 2023

Sorting Machines

The Reinvention of the Border in the 21st Century

Steffen Mau

Hosted by Catriona Gold
It is commonly thought that, thanks to globalization, nation-state borders are becoming increasingly porous. In Sorting Machines: The Reinvention of the Border in the 21st Century (Polity, 2022) Steffen Mau shows that this view is …
Critical Theory October 5, 2022

A Critical Theory of Police Power

The Fabrication of the Social Order

Mark Neocleous

Hosted by Catriona Gold
A Critical Theory of Police Power: The Fabrication of Social Order (Verso, 2021) offers a critical look at policing and the power of the state, examining the relationship between our ideas of order …
Critical Theory September 28, 2022

Organize, Fight, Win

Black Communist Women's Political Writing

Charisse Burden-Stelly and Jodi Dean

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Black Communist women throughout the early to mid-twentieth century fought for and led mass campaigns in the service of building collective power in the fight for liberation. Through concrete materialist …
Politics July 25, 2022

It's Not Free Speech

Race, Democracy, and the Future of Academic Freedom

Michael Bérubé and Jennifer Ruth

Hosted by Catriona Gold
The protests of summer 2020 led to long-overdue reassessments of the legacy of racism and white supremacy in both American academe and cultural life more generally. But while universities have …
Geography June 27, 2022

Abolition Geography

Essays Towards Liberation

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Gathering together Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s work from over three decades, Abolition Geography: Essays Towards Liberation (Verso, 2022) presents her singular contribution to the politics of abolition as theorist, researcher, and …
Policing, Incarceration, and Reform June 16, 2022

The Suspect

Counterterrorism, Islam and the Security State

Rizwaan Sabir

Hosted by Catriona Gold
What impact has two decades' worth of policing and counterterrorism had on the state of mind of Muslims in Britain? In The Suspect: Counterterrorism, Islam, and the Security State (Pluto …
General History May 23, 2022

The Lost Promise

American Universities in the 1960s

Ellen Schrecker

Hosted by Catriona Gold
The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s (University of Chicago Press, 2021) is a magisterial examination of the turmoil that rocked American universities in the 1960s, with a unique focus on the …
Critical Theory May 12, 2022

The Politics of Immunity

Security and the Policing of Bodies

Mark Neocleous

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how to immunize the social system against breakdown. The …
Policing, Incarceration, and Reform May 9, 2022

Deep Deception

The Story of the Spycop Network, by the Women Who Uncovered the Shocking Truth

Helen Steel et al.

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In Deep Deception: The Story of the Spycop Network, by the Women Who Uncovered the Shocking Truth (Ebury, 2022), five women discuss their experiences of being manipulated into serious long-term …
Russian and Eurasian Studies February 23, 2022

The Soviet Passport

The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR

Albert Baiburin

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In The Soviet Passport: The History, Nature and Uses of the Internal Passport in the USSR (Polity Press, 2021), Albert Baiburin provides the first in-depth study of the development and uses of the …
General History December 27, 2021

The Birth Certificate

An American History

Susan J. Pearson

Hosted by Catriona Gold
For many Americans, the birth certificate is a mundane piece of paper, unearthed from deep storage when applying for a driver’s license, verifying information for new employers, or claiming state …
General History December 23, 2021

The Deportation Express

A History of America Through Forced Removal

Ethan Blue

Hosted by Catriona Gold
The Deportation Express: A History of America Through Forced Removal (University of California Press, 2021) details the history of the United States' systematic expulsion of "undesirables" and immigrants, told through the lives of the …
Geography December 2, 2021

Transecting Securityscapes

Dispatches from Cambodia, Iraq, and Mozambique

Till F. Paasche and James Derrick Sidaway

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In this interview, I speak with Till F. Paasche and James D. Sidaway about their new book, Transecting Securityscapes: Dispatches from Cambodia, Iraq, and Mozambique (University of Georgia Press, 2021) …
Intellectual History October 12, 2021

Marxism and America

New Appraisals

Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome

Hosted by Catriona Gold
If the United States has been so hostile to Marxism, what accounts for Marxism's recurrent attractiveness to certain Americans? Marxism and America: New Appraisals (Manchester University Press, 2021) sheds new light …
General History August 30, 2021

Making the Forever War

Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism

Mark Philip Bradley and Mary L. Dudziak

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2021) is a timely collection of articles and essays by Marilyn B Young, edited by Mark P. Bradley …
General History August 18, 2021

Rough Draft

Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance

Amy J. Rutenberg

Hosted by Catriona Gold
Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance (Cornell University Press, 2019) draws the curtain on the race and class inequities of the Selective Service during …
Medicine July 22, 2021

Epidemic Illusions

On the Coloniality of Global Public Health

Eugene T. Richardson

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In Epidemic Illusions: On the Coloniality of Global Public Health (MIT Press, 2020), physician-anthropologist Eugene T. Richardson explores how public health practices—from epidemiological modeling to outbreak containment—help perpetuate global inequities. This book questions …
Critical Theory July 13, 2021

State Secrecy and Security

Refiguring the Covert Imaginary

William Walters

Hosted by Catriona Gold
In State Secrecy and Security: Refiguring the Covert Imaginary (Routledge, 2021), William Walters calls for secrecy to be given a more central place in critical security studies and elevated to become …