Valerie Werder is a doctoral candidate in film and visual studies and presidential scholar at Harvard University, where she is currently at work on a dissertation, “Body Camera,” which interrogates how police bodycam and handheld smartphone technologies shape contemporary articulations of subjectivity. Werder received her MA in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies from Columbia University and her BA in Visual Art from SUNY New Paltz. Her critical, creative, and scholarly work has been published in Public Culture, BOMB, Flash Art, and various exhibition catalogues, and has been performed at Participant Inc, New York, and Artspace, New Haven. Werder is a 2023–23 PEN America Prison and Justice Writing Program Mentor, and was previously a 2021 Art & Law Fellow. Her debut novel, Thieves (2023), was winner of the 2019 Fence Modern Prize in Prose.