Dalida María Benfield's research addresses artists’ and activists’ creative uses of video and other networked digital media towards social justice projects. Her work is focused on the transformational capacities of media art across different scales. As an artist and activist, she has developed production, education, exhibition, and distribution initiatives focused on youth, women, people of color in the U.S., and local and transnational social movements, including co-founding the media collective Video Machete. She received her Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of California-Berkeley in Comparative Ethnic Studies with Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation, Apparatuses, Globalities, Assemblages: Third Cinema, Now, chaired by Trinh T. Minh-ha, considers contemporary media art theory and practice, including work by Cao Fei, Michelle Dizon, and the Raqs Media Collective, in relation to the Third Cinema movement. As a Fellow at the Berkman Center, she is studying race and gender in the online presence of ICT4D programs, as well as working on collaborative projects with the Networked Cultures Working Group, the Cyberscholars Working Group, and metaLAB(at)Harvard.
