However, her American stepfather's job as a military attaché caused the family to move every few years to postings in cities including Leghorn, Rome, Italy; Yokohama, Japan; Kilene, Texas; and Ft. Knox, Kentucky.
Stafford's books closely examine modes and technologies of visual presentation from the early modern period up to today's digital media.
She works at the intersection of the imaging arts, the optical sciences, and performance technologies, with a strong interest in how experience is embodied.
Her recent essays examine the revolutionary ways in which the brain sciences are changing our view of the total sensorium and inflecting our fundamental assumptions concerning perception, sensation, emotion, mental imagery, and subjectivity.
Stafford's views have found an application in criticism of early mass media and multiple viewpoints, what she describes as "cross-referencing material bits of distant reality".