Alexandra Dennett studies modern art and the history of photography. Her dissertation examines how photographs both represent and misrepresent the transformations of modern Central Asia from 1890–1940, a period animated by successive waves of imperialism, revolution, and industrialization. Her research interests include traveling artists, abstraction, avant-garde practices, revolutionary politics, photography, and its circulation in print.

She received her BA in the History of Art from Yale and spent a year studying at the European University at Saint Petersburg in Russia.