PD&A Expert Spotlight: April Gould, Ph.D., M.P.H.
Radicalization, Extremism, and Collective Violence
Dr. April Gould is an expert on radicalization, extremism, and collective violence. This expertise derives from both her academic research and her personal experience interviewing and analyzing hard-to-reach and violent criminal populations. She is qualified to testify as an expert in cases in which individuals have been radicalized online or through group involvement and have acted on behalf of personal or collective grievances, and she would be effective in investigating, locating, and interviewing people who would prefer to remain off the grid.
Dr. Gould’s experience includes forensic interviewing, qualitative and quantitative research, and academic publishing involving over 9,500 cases involved in criminal and civil litigation. Dr. Gould has interviewed current and former terrorists, AB109 parolees, members of law enforcement, gang members, and victims of child abuse, sexual assault, and domestic violence. She has taught courses on violence risk assessment, threat assessment, radicalization, workplace violence prevention, mental illness, suicide prevention, and deviance to intelligence, security, and human resources professionals and to university students.
Dr. Gould is perhaps best known for her work interviewing former white supremacist terrorists about their grievances and desistance from violent extremism. Her dissertation research—which included 280 women who had killed 975 victims (and attempted to kill over 3,700 others)—redefined the concept of grievances in radicalization and terrorism, invalidating former theories and highlighting inconsistencies and misconceptions commonly held by the public and academics alike. Her analyses demonstrated how grievances, education, and employment influence women’s duration of involvement in terrorism and their lethality in violent extremism. Her research has been published in the German Handbook of Terrorism, the Journal of Threat Assessment and Management, the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology, and Behavioral Sciences and the Law, among others.
Park Dietz, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., commented:
“Before earning her doctorate, April approached me for career guidance at the suggestion of PD&A expert Janet Warren, D.S.W., who gave April her strongest recommendation. Like me, April pursued her interests in criminology and public health. She found that criminology offered her a pathway to study the growing problem of collective violence and extremism, which we expect will be central to significant litigation in the coming decades. As a graduate student, she worked on various projects under my supervision and proved adept at identifying both the significant clues in case files and the significant studies within the cluttered research literature on a host of topics. It is a delight to offer her services to our clients as an interviewer, a consultant, and a testifying expert, and all who retain her will be equally delighted with her energy and positive attitude, even in the face of the tragedies that underlie our work.”
Dr. Gould holds a Ph.D. in Sociology (concentrations in criminology and medical sociology; University of California, Riverside), a master’s degree in sociology (University of California, Riverside), and a master’s degree in public health (University of Virginia). Her forensic career began at the University of Virginia’s Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy, a facility of the University’s School of Law and School of Medicine. As a research specialist at the Institute, Dr. Gould received world-renowned forensic training, collaborated with the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit on research concerning online radicalization, women’s radicalization and involvement in terrorism, child abduction, and child abduction-murders, and she had the opportunity to review literally thousands of case files of child sexual abuse. She has worked as a research criminologist and instructor for both Park Dietz & Associates and Threat Assessment Group since 2017 and for the Presley Center for Crime and Justice Studies since 2018.
To schedule a consultation with Dr. Gould or other PD&A experts, call 949-723-2211 or click here at expert@parkdietzassociates.com.