In archaeological work, Goodson is most closely associated with the Villa Magna site in Italy where she has been field director since 2006.
She received her master's degree from Columbia University in 1998 where she studied at the Department of Art History and Archaeology.
In 2004/05 she was a research associate at the Medieval Institute and a visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame.
[6] In 2007, she was awarded the Blackwells Prize for her article "Material memory: Rebuilding the basilica of S. Cecilia in Trastevere, Rome" which appeared that year in the journal Early Medieval Europe.
In 2016, she was awarded a Leverhulme Trust Research Fellowship for a project, "Urban gardening in Early Medieval Italy: cultivating the city.