She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis where she specialized in Latin American Literatures and Cultures and Second Language Acquisition. Valko explores issues related to travel, tourism, nationalism, and identity formation in 19th and 20th century Latin American literary and cultural studies. Her recent research and publications focus on Germanic migration and diasporic communities, the rhetoric of transnational commerce, and cross-cultural representations in the contexts of Argentina and Chile.