Marcus Golding is a Ph.D. candidate in the History department. He holds a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela, and a M.A. in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University. Born and raised in Venezuela, Golding’s research interest as a PhD student emphasize U.S. corporate soft power strategies in Latin America during the Cold War.

Golding’s dissertation project, tentatively titled “The Price of Doing Business: Capital, National Development and Soft Power in the Venezuelan Oil Industry, 1939-1975” explores the socio-economic contributions and social alliances made by the dominant U.S. oil corporations (Jersey Standard and Gulf) to curry favor with locals and to fend off nationalist attacks that could threaten their long control over local petroleum. The first stages of this dissertation project have already taken place with research in Caracas and Maracaibo in Venezuela, and the National Archives at College Park in the United States. He expects to conduct further research during the 2021-2022 academic year.

At UT Austin, Golding is a a graduate fellow at the Clements Center for National Security since 2019. He has contributed with encyclopedia size biographies for the Handbook of Texas Women, an initiative of the Texas State Historical Association.

Golding has contributed with different book reviews for the UT’s public history website Not Even Past and H-Net, an interdisciplinary platform and network of scholars focused on the social sciences and the humanities.  He has also featured in podcast interviews talking about his research interests. Some of his articles have appeared in academic journals based in Chile (Encrucijada Americana) and Venezuela (Revista Anales).

He supports history more as a public discourse and is interested in archival preservation. As such, Golding has volunteered in digitization projects at the Benson Latin American Collection. He has worked as a content curator for a World History lesson plan centered on the Inter-American Cold War for high school teachers. Golding's interest in patrimony preservation extends to historic buildings and sites. In that regard, he has taken courses in historic preservation at the Architecture Department, and has collaborated with the Texas State Historical Commission in nominating buildings for preservation in the city of Austin.

Golding also has his own blog where he has written book reviews and personal articles about historical and science fiction topics, including Ancient Rome, the Byzantine Empire, Latin America and Star Wars, among other things.