Dagmar Hovestadt studied journalism, political science and film in Mainz, Boulder (Colorado) and Berlin completing with a Master’s Degree from the Freie Universität Berlin.

An associate producer for the BBC during the fall of the Berlin Wall she continued her career as an investigative reporter and producer for the national German television network ARD covering stories on the development and conflicts of German unification for the national tv magazine "Kontraste" (kontraste.de). During her time at ARD she also produced programs on national and regional elections and special editions focusing on East German history. Teaching investigative research to beginning journalists at ZFP, an educational institution for ARD and ZDF, she was also asked to join journalist panels on the state of journalism and US-German relations. 

End of 1999 Hovestadt returned to the U.S. Here she is working as a producer and reporter for German-language TV programs and has been workinging among others for ARD, ZDF, 3SAT, Premiere and ORF covering the elections, the Katrina disaster and other current affairs as well as science, technology and entertainment topics. In March 08 her documentary with Michael Grotenhoff about Google premiered on 3SAT.

Dagmar also works as a producer and production manager for documentaries. She recently worked on a two-part documentary about a sled dog race along the Yukon and for several editions of NDR's travel-show Länder-Menschen-Abenteuer in Alaska and California. She was the production manager for the ORF - Discovery documentary The Wild and The West produced by Cosmos Factory in Vienna and shot on location in Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and South Dakota. cosmosfactory.at

She also worked for Mischief Films, Vienna on a documentary about Muhammad Asad (A Road to Mekka, 2008), Hedy Lamarr (Calling Hedy Lamarr, 2003) and Edgar Ulmer (Edgar G.Ulmer -The Man Off Screen, 2004), all screend at film festivals and on European TV (mischief-films.com).

Next to her production work she also develops her own projects. Her shortfilm Scent of a Dude (with Paul Ohnersorgen) premiered in Hollywood at the RAD Digital Film Festival at the end of 2002. Shorts and documentary projects are in development.

Hovestadt is a member of the L.A. Press Club as well as a long-term member of the German union of journalists and filmmakers ver.di and a member of FIND/Film Independent. She is also part of the Fulbright Alumni network, a Burns alumni as well as a member and co-founder of Netzwerk Recherche in Germany.