Mandell is editor of the forthcoming book “Global Craftivism since the Pussyhats: Handcraft Responses to Violence, War, Illness and Isolation” (with Rowman & Littlefield in 2025). She is also under contract for an upcoming book with Rowman & Littlefield, Crafting Choice: Abortion Politics and Handwork in the U.S. She’s been interviewed by The New York Times and The Associated Press, among other global outlets, on the importance of making objects by hand. 

Mandell is editor of “Crafting Dissent: Handicraft as Protest from the American Revolution to the Pussyhats” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); co-curator and co-editor of “Crafting Democracy: Fiber Arts and Activism” a 7-venue exhibition concept and book (RIT Press, 2019); a co-editor of “Nasty Women and Bad Hombres: Gender and Race in the 2016 US Presidential Election” (University of Rochester Press, 2018); author of “Sex Scandals, Gender and Power in Contemporary American Politics” (Praeger, 2017); and co-editor of “Scandal in a Digital Age” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

In 2025, she was selected as a visiting professor at University of Paris – Est Creteil to deliver a series of lectures and workshops on artistic based research; exhibition curation; teaching on craftivism; and craft as free expression. She has also taught handstitching workshops at museums and nonprofit spaces throughout the Northeast.

As a journalist, her work has been published in Politico, The Boston Globe, where she worked as a correspondent from 2008-2012; The Chicago Tribune, The LA Times, Palm Beach Post, Star-Tribune, Star-Ledger, among others. An avid DIY’er who loves to unleash creativity in others, Mandell is a founder of her university’s annual Zine Fest. Her scholarly inquiries into collaborative handcraft as change-agents have been published in Craft Research, the Journal of Urban Cultural Studies, and the Journal of Feminist Scholarship. She is on the international advisory board of the Journal of Art & Communities and on the editorial board the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion and Textiles. Her research has been funded by the Center for Craft and Fiber Art Now. In 2020 she was a guest artist with Visual Studies Workshop, whose residency funded the production of her artist book, “The Yarn Must Live: A Polemic on a Pandemic and Public Art,” which was acquired by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in 2021. Since 2017, she has organized maker interventions on issues of social reform tied to geographic place reaching nearly 3,000 craft participants.

She is on Instagram: @crochetact