Mauro J. Caraccioli

Mauro José Caraccioli is Associate Professor of Modern Political Theory and Director of International Studies in the Department of Political Science at Virginia Tech.

As a political theorist and intellectual historian, his research and teaching explore the intersections of empire, ecology, religion, translation, and global politics. His work draws on intellectual history, cultural studies, and interpretive social science to examine how knowledge travels across languages, cultures, and political worlds.

Born in San Pedro Sula, Honduras and raised in Miami, Florida, Caraccioli earned degrees in Philosophy and International Relations from Florida International University before completing graduate study in Political Geography at Florida State University and receiving his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Florida in 2015. From 2015 to 2026, he served as Core Faculty in the interdisciplinary ASPECT Doctoral Program.

Caraccioli is the author of Writing the New World: The Politics of Natural History in the Early Spanish Empire (University of Florida Press, 2021), which examines the relationship between faith, nature, and empire in colonial Spanish America. Through a study of early modern missionary natural histories, the book traces how wonder functioned as both an epistemological and political practice, shaping emerging understandings of the natural world while advancing projects of conquest and colonization. In 2023, the book received the Best Book Award from the Theory Section of the International Studies Association.

His more recent work turns to questions of language and translation in global politics. Co-edited with Einar Wigen (University of Oslo), Interlingual Relations: Global Politics in a Polyglot World (University of Michigan Press, 2026) advances a new research agenda for the study of translation in International Relations and demonstrates how linguistic mediation shapes political life across local, national, and international contexts. He is currently working on a cultural and intellectual history of the Cold War in Latin America, examining the relationship between geopolitics, knowledge production, and cultural identity in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.