Her research draws on the fields of cultural studies, history, and critical theory on racial capitalism and globalization. An Associate Professor at the University of Virginia with a PhD from Emory University (2013), Mahler’s work has been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, and the Mellon Foundation. Mahler frequently gives lectures at public and academic institutions around the globe and contributes to podcasts, magazines and periodicals, like Vogue Japan, The Washington Post, New Books Network, Black Agenda Report, and Revista Común (Mexico City). Her work has inspired exhibits in New York City, Chicago, Charlottesville, and Torrance, California.

She is author of From the Tricontinental to the Global South: Race, Radicalism, and Transnational Solidarity (Duke University Press, 2018) and co-editor of The Comintern and the Global South: Global Designs/Local Encounters (Routledge, forthcoming 2023) as well as Men with Guns: Cultures of Paramilitarism and the Modern Americas. Her book in progress, South-South Solidarities: Racial Capitalism and Political Community from the Americas to the Globe, was supported by a 2020-21 ACLS Fellowship.

Beyond this research, Mahler has done significant work to support the foundation and growth of the interdisciplinary field of Global South studies. She is the creator and director of Global South Studies; author of “Global South” for Oxford Bibliographies in Literary and Critical Theory; guest editor, with Magalí Armillas-Tiseyra, of two special issues of CLS: Comparative Literature Studies on “New Directions in Global South Studies” (2021 and 2022); and co-editor of a special issue of the journal The Global South. She is also a founding executive committee member of the Global South forum of the Modern Languages Association (MLA).

Mahler serves as co-coordinator of the Internationalism project with the Academy of Global Humanities and Critical Theory; co-coordinator for the University of Virginia’s Interdisciplinary Doctoral Fellowship in Caribbean Literatures, Arts, and Cultures; on the executive committee of the MLA 20th and 21st century Latin America forum; and on the editorial boards of Latin American Literary Review, Pacha: Revista de Estudios Contemporáneos del Sur Global, and the Afro-Latin American Writers in Translation series for the University of New Mexico Press.

On a personal note, Mahler grew up in Birmingham, Alabama and is interested in the history of racial justice and multiracial workers’ struggles in the U.S. South and in their connections to similar movements around the globe. She grew up singing, enjoys social dancing, and is happiest on the river and at the beach.