After completing her BA in Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago, where Professor Priscilla Layne concentrated on German and English literature, she spent three years in Germany. She received both a Fulbright TA fellowship and a scholarship from the Study Foundation of the Berlin Parliament. In 2005, Professor Layne continued her studies at the University of California at Berkeley where she received her MA in 2006 and PhD in 2011. In fall 2011, she joined the faculty of the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.