Sarah J. Mahler, Ph.D., is professor emerita of anthropology in the Department of Global & Sociocultural Studies at Florida International University.
Dr. Mahler's research interests include cultural anthropology; the culture concept; migration in transnational perspective; gender and gender relations, particularly in transnational perspective; urban and suburban studies; Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe; and immigration and refugee law and human rights. Her research and publications focus primarily on Latin American and Caribbean migration to the United States and the development of transnational ties between migrants and their home communities, particularly how transnational ties inflect gender identities and relations.
Dr. Mahler's book, Culture as Comfort: The Many Things You Already Know [but Might Not Realize] about Culture, was published in 2012. She has also researched faith and religious ties among immigrants and transnationally, resulting in her coedited book Churches and Charity in the Immigrant City (2009). She previously authored Salvadorans in Suburbia: Symbiosis and Conflict (1996) and American Dreaming: Immigrant Life on the Margins (1995).
Dr. Mahler edited a special issue of the journal Latino Studies (2018) on Miami's Latino communities. She also coedited a special volume of the American Behavioral Scientist (2011) on immigrants and politics in comparative Canadian-U.S. perspective. Dr. Mahler's research and program grants have been funded by the European Union Commission, the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services, the Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Canadian Embassy. From 2005 to 2008 she served as director of the Center for Transnational and Comparative Studies at Florida International University, where she was in charge of European studies, migration studies, judaic studies, FIU's Spirituality Center, and also formed and funded Middle Eastern studies. Prior to her directorship, she served as graduate program director of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Florida International University.
Professor Mahler earned her Ph.D. and M.Phil. in anthropology at Columbia University. She also holds a B.A. in liberal arts from Amherst College.