Sandal earned her Ph.D. in Politics and International Relations from University of Southern California in 2010, and she was a postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute of International Studies at Brown University from 2010-13. In addition to numerous book chapters, she has published articles in the European Journal of International Relations, International Politics, Review of International Studies, Alternatives, Political Studies, West European Politics, British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Politics and Religion, Human Rights Quarterly, and Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Sandal is the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies. She is also the author of Religious Leaders and Conflict Transformation (Cambridge University Press, 2017) and Religion and International Relations Theory (with Jonathan Fox; Routledge, 2013). Sandal is currently the Chair of the Religion and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association. In the past, she also served as the Chair of the Religion and International Relations Section (2016-2018) and the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Section (2015-2017) of the International Studies Association.