Brynne McBryde holds a PhD in Art History from the Pennsylvania State University. She previously taught at Penn State, the Cleveland Institute of Art and UNC, Greensboro. Most recently, she has been a Junior Fellow and Postdoctoral Researcher with the Turin Humanities Programme, Fondazione 1563 in Turin, Italy. Her research examines the process by which experiential identities such as health, gender, sexuality, and race were transformed into physiological, concrete, and scientifically-defined types. During her doctoral studies, she received several awards and grants, including the Pennsylvania State University Alumni Association Dissertation Award (2016). She is currently completing a book manuscript, Embodied Medical Mythologies: Nineteenth-century medical illustration and the construction of biological identity, that explores the role of medical illustrations in creating categories of gender, sexuality, and race.