Christine Mahoney is Professor of Public Policy and Politics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and Director of Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia.

She studies social justice advocacy, activism and direct action through social entrepreneurship. Her first book Brussels vs. the Beltway (Georgetown University Press) explored how advocates shape public policy in two of the most powerful political systems on the planet: the US and the EU. She conducted fieldwork in seven conflict zones in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America for her second book Failure and Hope: Fighting for the Rights of the Forcibly Displaced (Cambridge University Press). The book argues we need to advance social entrepreneurship for the 60 million people displaced by violent conflict worldwide.

To help foster innovative solutions to social problems she launched and leads Social Entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia. Over the past three years the SE@UVA Initiative has introduced new courses on social entrepreneurship, a minor, a concept competition, scholarships to work with social enterprises and a myriad of student activities providing hands-on experience in social innovation. 

She was previously an Assistant Professor at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University and the Director of the Center for European Studies and the Maxwell EU Center. She has been a Fulbright Fellow, Visiting Scholar at Oxford, a National Science Foundation grant recipient, and recipient of the Emerging Scholar award from the American Political Science Association.