Alex Bentley

Biography

Professor Bentley started Fall 2017 as the new Head of Anthropology at UTK. The previous two years he served as Professor and Department Chair at University of Houston, and before that, Bentley spent fourteen years at British universities. In the U.K. Bentley was first a postdoc at the Institute of Archaeology University College London (2001-2005), then reader Anthropology Department at Durham University (2005-2011), and then Professor of Archaeology and Anthropology at University of Bristol (2011-2015), where he was also Head (2012-2014). In Fall 2011, Bentley spent a sabbatical semester at Northwestern University, in the Anthropology Departmet and Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, where he remains external faculty  

Research Interest

Bentley’s research involves interdisciplinary analysis of culture change, past and  present. This involves two main methodologies, one in analysis of isotopes in archaeological skeletal material, and the other in data-driven quantitative modeling of culture change.