Ms Mahon is a distinguished member of the Alumni community with numerous ties to the Institute. She completed a Master in International Law and is currently pursuing a PhD at the Institute. Before taking up her current appointment at the University of Michigan, she was a Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights, a joint centre of the Institute and the University of Geneva.
Among Ms Mahon’s accomplishments is her work as Special Advisor to Mrs Mary Robinson (former President of Ireland and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) in Mrs Robinson’s role as Chair of the Board of the Global Alliance on Vaccines and Immunizations, and as the legal advisor to the former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. She has also worked as the Advisor on International Organisations for Amnesty International’s UN Geneva Office, as the legal advisor on economic, social and cultural rights for the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights officer at the International Service for Human Rights, a consultant for the UN (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and UNDP), and as a mergers and acquisitions lawyer for a top-tier corporate law firm in Australia. She is also the joint Founding Coordinator of the Project on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
In addition to her studies at the Institute, she holds an LLB (Hons.) from the Australian National University (ANU) and a BA in international relations and development studies from ANU.
Professor Mahon’s research interests include many areas of international human rights law, socio-economic rights (including housing rights, right to food, right to health, right to water, right to education, work and labour rights, cultural rights), international organisations, civil society, non-governmental organisations, non-state actors, human rights advocacy and litigation, human rights based approaches to development, and UN human rights mechanisms.