Prof. Dorit Sivan is a Coastal geologist. She graduated Ph.D on 1996, in the Institute of Earth Sciences, Department of Geology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and was a Senior lecturer in the Department of Maritime Civilizations, University of Haifa, Israel.

Over the last two decades She has focused mainly on two closely connected subjects:  The reconstruction of the Israeli coastal environment in the last two high-stands: the Holocene and the last 125ka years, also known as ‘Landscape Archaeology’ due to the integration of human settlement records (which the Mediterranean is rich with). The landscape research has been recently enlarged to the shallow shelf (based mainly on seismic surveys) in collaboration with Dr. Dix of NOC, Southampton and Israeli colleagues. Prof. Sivan was also involved in Late Holocene sand sheets and dune studies along the Israeli coast with Dr. Y. Roskin. 

Indications of sea levels over the last Interglacial cycle (including work on the MIS5.5 sea-levels at the Galilee coast which was part of her Ph.D), with the emphasis on the Holocene and even last 2-3 millennia and the last Millennium.

These two subjects— the coastal palaeo-geography of Israel and the reconstruction of past sea levels in the eastern Mediterranean also led to assessments of various subjects, among which were vertical earth movements of isostatic and tectonic origin on the coast of Israel during periods of human activity. The Last Interglacial (LIG) sea-level study is based on indicative coastal structures while the Holocene database is mainly based on archaeological indicators combined with bio-constructions (the fixed Vermatidae Dendropoma petraeum) relevant mainly for the last Millennium.  All these studies are carried out in collaboration with researchers from Israel and all around the world, and especially the Mediterranean.

E-mail:  dsivan@research.haifa.ac.il