Robert Entenmann is a native of Seattle and a graduate of the University of Washington (B.A., Far Eastern Studies, 1971). He earned an M.A. in East Asian Studies at Stanford in 1973 and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages at Harvard in 1982. He first visited China in 1972, shortly after relations between the United States and China began to open. In 1975-76 he studied at the Inter-University Center for Chinese Language Studies in Taiwan, where he also acted for a couple of days as an extra in a long-forgotten martial arts feature film. In 1980, he married Sarah Johnson, a graduate of Carleton College.

Two years later, in 1982, he moved to Northfield and began his career at St. Olaf College.  Entenmann teaches history and interdisciplinary courses on China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, including Chinese-language Foreign Languages Across the Curriculum components in two Chinese history courses. His research examines the social history of Chinese Catholics in eighteenth-century Sichuan, a topic that has taken him to archives in China, France, and the Vatican. His publications include two chapters in Daniel H. Bays, ed., Christianity in China from the Eighteenth Century to the Present (Stanford University Press, 1996) and a contribution to Nicolas Standaert, ed., Handbook of Christianity in China, volume 1: 635-1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2001). Five of his essays have been translated into Chinese by Gu Weimin 顾卫民, a historian at Shanghai Normal University, and published in  Yan Huayang 鄢华阳 [Robert Entenmann] et al., Zhongguo Tianzhujiao lishi yiwenji  中国天主教历史译文 (A Collection of translated essays on the history of Chinese Catholicism; Taipei: Yuzhouguang, 2006; Guilin: Guangxi Shifan Daxue Chubanshe, 2010). He has contributed chapters to ten other books.

Entenmann has served terms as department chair of both History and Asian Studies. In 1995 he was field supervisor of St. Olaf's Term in Asia and in May, 1997, he was a visiting scholar at Sichuan University on a grant from the American Philosophical Society. He has served on the board of directors of the Association for Asian Studies and was Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College in 2002-2003. In 2007 he gave the fall Mellby Lecture at St. Olaf College on "The Life and Times of Andreas Ly [李安德 1693-1774], Chinese Catholic Priest." Entenmann served as president of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs in 2008-2009. 

He and Sarah have two children - Leah, Carleton '06, and David, St. Olaf '11.