[2] A material culture specialist and landscape archaeologist, she was the UCL Institute of Archaeology's first permanent female director (2014–22).

She was awarded a PhD from the University of London in 1993 for her thesis on First Millennium BC Pottery Traditions in Southern Britain.

[8] This work was followed, from 2002 to 2013, by the Tavoliere-Gargano Prehistory Project, which she co-directed with Ruth Whitehouse, and in which the principals of sensory archaeology, developed out of the Leskernick Project, were worked through in the context of the Neolithic villaggi trincerati (ditched villages) of southeast Italy.

Her work on this project was published in a much referred to European Journal of Archaeology article, Phenomenology in Practice (2006),[9] and in the book Neolithic Spaces (2020).

After a distinguished career in research, teaching and university administration, Sue Hamilton became the first permanent female director of the UCL Institute of Archaeology on 1 September 2014.