[3] Upon graduating from high school, Mountz completed her Bachelor of Arts degree in Latin American and Caribbean studies and sociology at Dartmouth College.
"[5] During the 2008–09 academic year, Mountz was promoted to the role of associate professor and earned a five-year National Science Foundation Career Grant for her project "Geographies of Sovereignty: Global Migration, Legality, and the Island Index.
[8] Upon joining the faculty at WLU as the Canada Research Chair in Global Migration, Mountz was elected a member of the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists for being "on the forefront of academic research into vexing questions of human security and enforcement at the border by the nation state.
"[9] Her Canada Research Chair was renewed in 2017 for an additional five years to allow her to study the global search for asylum among migrants detained on islands off the shores of Australia, Europe and the United States.
[12] It received the 2020 AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography for being "an important, timely and critical intervention in debates over the deadly curtailment of refugee rights globally.