Iolanda Pensa developed a Ph.D. thesis on the Biennial of Contemporary African Arts in Dakar. She is an art critic specialized on the African continent and diaspora, with a focus on the changes on the state of intellectual property generated by information and communication technologies. She was scientific director at lettera27 Foundation, whose mission is to support the right to literacy, education, and the access to knowledge and information. She accomplished comparative researches on a variety of contexts and countries. She is the co-curator with Roberto Casati of the research project Mobile Access to Knowledge. Since 2013 she is a researcher at the Laboratory of visual culture at SUPSI University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.