Hannelore Vanhaverbeke obtained her Ph.D. in archaeology in 1999. Since then she has been a postdoctoral research fellow working with the Sagalassos team. Her main area of research is changing land use and settlement patterns in the city's territory. She directs the annual surveys in this region and closely cooperates with specialists in remote sensing, geomorphology and palynology to reconstruct landscape evolution throughout the centuries.

Currently she is employed as assistant professor at Mehmet Akif Ersoy University in Burdur.