Professor Jonathan Benjamin

Professor Jonathan Benjamin FSA is an ARC Future Fellow at Flinders University, and a specialist in the archaeology of submerged landscapes, Pleistocene-Holocene transitions and applied methods in Maritime and Underwater Archaeology. His research interests include past human transitions and cultural migrations, the inundation of coastal sites and resulting impacts on past societies, 3D site recording and the advancement of method in maritime and underwater archaeology. Jonathan has undertaken various aspects of terrestrial, aerial and underwater archaeological research across a wide temporal spectrum from prehistoric, classical and historical periods in the United Kingdom, Slovenia, Croatia, Cyprus, Indonesia, Israel, Denmark, as well as pre and post-contact sites in North America and Australia. He is an expert in diver-based photographic and photogrammetric recording of underwater archaeological sites and in scientific diving: he was President of the Australia and New Zealand Scientific Diving Association (2022 - 2024), represents Flinders University on the Standards Australia committees for occupational and scientific diving, and established as Academic Coordinator the Professional Scientific Diver microcredential at Flinders. As an Early Stage Researcher in the European COST Action 'SPLASHCOS' (2009 - 2013), Jonathan was lead editor of Submerged Prehistory (2011). Before joining Flinders Jonathan was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Edinburgh (History, Classics and Archaeology) and worked for Wessex Archaeology Coastal & Marine, based in Scotland. Jonathan joined Flinders University in 2014 and served as Co-Chair of the UNESCO UNITWIN Network for Underwater Archaeology from 2015 - 2018. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London), and was the Lead CI for the ARC Discovery Project: Deep History of Sea Country: Climate, Sea Level and Culture (DP170100812, 2017 - 2021). In 2023 he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship (FT230100462), Submerged cultural landscapes and the underwater heritage of Sea Country (2024 - 2028), which continues research in partnership with the Murujuga Aboriginal Corporation, including training its Land and Sea Rangers as scientific divers. In 2026, Jonathan was invited to join the Australian Research Council College of Experts (2027 – 2029).