Brenda Longfellow received her Ph.D. in classical art and archaeology from the University of Michigan. She teaches classes on Egyptian, Greek, and Roman art, and her research is focused on the art, architecture, and hydraulics of the ancient Roman Empire. She is the author of the book Roman Imperialism and Civic Patronage: Form, Meaning and Ideology in Monumental Fountain Complexes (Cambridge University Press, 2011) and co-editor of the books Roman Artists, Patrons, and Public Consumption: Familiar Works Reconsidered (University of Michigan, 2018) and Women's Lives, Women's Voices: Roman Material Culture and Female Agency in the Bay of Naples (University of Texas Press, 2021). She is currently working on a monograph on the public lives of women in Pompeii. 

Her research has been published in journals like the American Journal of Archaeology and the Art Bulletin, and her article in the Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome received the Barbara McManus Award from the Women’s Classical Caucus. ​She has received the Andrew Heiskell Post-Doctoral Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome, the Samuel H. Kress Fellowship from the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, a Loeb Classical Library Foundation Fellowship, and a Samuel H. Kress Travel Fellowship.