[4][5] Langford was educated at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before obtaining her MA and PhD from McGill University.
[6] She published her thesis under the title "Suspended conversations, private photographic albums in the public collection of the McCord Museum of Canadian History.
[10] In 2007, Langford published Scissors, Paper, Stone: Expressions of Memory in Contemporary Photographic Art with McGill-Queen's University Press.
[9] In 2011, Langford was appointed research chair and director of Concordia University's Gail and Stephen A. Jarislowsky Institute for Studies in Canadian Art, succeeding François-Marc Gagnon.
Before obtaining this position, Langford served as editor-in-chief of the Journal of Canadian Art History and an advisory board member for Ciel variable magazine.