Catherine Freyne

Dr Catherine Freyne is a historian and producer of multimedia history content. She has worked as Features Producer at ABC Radio National, Historian at the City of Sydney and Curator at the State Library of NSW. For her work in radio and podcasting, Catherine has received two NSW Premier’s History Awards, the Oral History Australia Media Award and a Gold Signal Award. Her doctoral thesis ‘The Family as Closet: "Gay married men", their wives and their children in Sydney, 1970-2000’ combines history, sexuality studies and family memoir. In 2024 it won ‘Best Thesis’ in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at UTS and placement on the Chancellor’s List. As an undergraduate, Catherine studied Australian history at UNSW earning First Class Honours for ‘Terra Alterius’, a study of non-Indigenous anxiety about belonging in Australia. She loves birds, underdogs, ocean swimming and primary sources.