Professor DeFord is a specialist in the music of the Renaissance, she is editor of several volumes of music by Giovanni Ferretti and Orazio Vecchi and a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Her articles have appeared in numerous scholarly journals, including Studi musicali, Acta musicologica, Musica disciplina, Early Music History, Early Music, and The Journal of Musicology.