James Bennett is a complexity scientist focusing on the dynamics of human history. Since 2015 he has been a part of Seshat: Global History Databank, a multidisciplinary project examining long-run social dynamics by combining qualitative and empirical information about the past with advanced quantitative analysis and computer modelling.

His current research seeks to model and understand the rise, spread, and fall of societies, from the Neolithic to the modern. Prior to these investigations, he was a founder, successful entrepreneur, executive and software developer for several companies in Silicon Valley. As Vice President of Recommendation Systems at Netflix, he ran the Netflix Prize.

He is a research scientist at the University of Washington helping to develop long-range, long-duration autonomous underwater gliders for scientistic investigation of the world’s oceans.