Our Dynamic Earth

Matthew Bennett's passion for geography comes from a childhood spent in Snowdonia and he has worked widely throughout the world on a range of projects. In the 1990s he worked on glacial and Quaternary projects in the Arctic, as well as throughout the UK. He published widely on aspects of glaciology, sedimentology, and geomorphology. During this time, he also wrote several leading textbooks. In 2002 he joined Bournemouth University and Matthew started to work in Mexico on problems in Quaternary stratigraphy, environmental archaeology, and volcanic hazards. His work has featured in a range of TV and radio broadcasts, and he is known for his work on the Perfect Sandcastle. During this time Matthew also ran a successful environmental consultancy firm at Bournemouth University. He was Dean of Applied Sciences 2007 to 2010. In 2007 he joined the Koobi Fora Field School and his work on the Ileret footprints was published in Science in 2009. Since then, and working extensively throughout Africa, Matthew has published widely on ancient footprints. In 2010 Matthew became Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Internationalisation at Bournemouth a post he held until 2014. In 2014 he stepped down to focus on his research and wrote a research textbook on human footprints. Matthew’s current research involves ecological modelling of hominin evolution using a range of landscape and agent-based models as well as working on footprint projects around the world. In 2015 Matthew was awarded an Innovation Grant to translate his footprint research into a practical tool for use by forensic scientist. Since 2017 Matthew has been working at White Sands National Park in New Mexico which has one of the largest concentrations of Pleistocene footprints anywhere in the world.  These tracks have been dated to the Last Glacial Maximum which makes the White Sands footprints the oldest human tracks in the Americas, work that was published in Science in 2021.