Levent Atici

Bio

Dr. Levent Atici is Associate Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Faculty and Student Engagement in the Office of University Interdisciplinary Programs (OUIP). His primary responsibilities include integrating, expanding and supporting interdisciplinary initiatives for undergraduate and graduate students universitywide; interfacing OUIP units; fostering high-impact interdisciplinary student experiences; and serving as the central program manager for the Chancellor’s Faculty Excellence Program (CFEP), an interdisciplinary effort designed to foster synergies across colleges and departments through specialized faculty clusters.

Atici is also a member of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, where he holds a faculty appointment as a professor of anthropology and archaeology with technical expertise in zooarchaeology, the study of hard animal tissues excavated from archaeological sites. His research probes relationships between humans, animals and the environment. More specifically, he focuses on the origins of the food we eat, and the evolution of urban food provisioning systems through integrating and synthesizing data from animal bones, ancient DNA techniques, geochemistry and cuneiform tablets. He has published extensively on the subsistence economies of the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers as well as urban food provisioning in ancient Anatolia (present-day Turkey). Some of Atici’s work appeared in top-tier research journals, including Science, Science Advances, PNAS, PLOS One, Elife, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, and Advances in Archaeological Practice. He has been awarded prestigious competitive external grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the National Geographic Society for his work on food provisioning systems in early cities and on the origins and spread of domesticated animals in Southwest Asia. He also served as PI on a major National Science Foundation grant, “Enhancing the Transition of COVID-19-Affected Students from Undergraduate to Graduate Careers in STEM through Multi-Year Undergraduate Research Experiences.” 

Atici earned a Bachelor of Arts in prehistory and history of art, and a Master of Arts in archaeology from the University of Ankara, as well as a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University.