• Abrupt and long-term climatic change and its effects on sedimentological processes.
• Marine record of climate change.
• Marine sediments and geomorphology.
• Seafloor mapping.
• Submarine geohazards.

Prof. Benetti is currently Head of School of Geography and Environmental Science.

She contributes to teaching and especially the ES Research Methods and Field School and the MSc Environmental Management Research Project.

She is Senior Fellow of Advance HE

Professor Sara Benetti is a marine geoscientist, with an interest in sedimentary processes and geomorphology. She has gained experience in marine research through her work at the National Oceanography Centre (UK), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (USA), Bedford Institute of Oceanography (Canada), British Antarctic Survey (UK) and the Advanced Mapping Section at the Marine Institute of Ireland. She works extensively with datasets obtained from marine coring and drilling, multibeam echo-sounder bathymetric and backscatter and sub-bottom data.

She has been involved in several Europe-wide research collaborations, funded at European and UK level, with emphasis on the reconstruction of the extent and dynamics of the British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS) using geophysical and sedimentological datasets (BRITICE-CHRONO and GLANAM). For this research, she also succeeded in securing funding and acting as chief scientist or co-investigator on ten research cruises on the Irish continental margin, as well as on other collaborative projects.

More recently, she obtained funding from NERC/UKRI to conduct a virtual site survey using existing data on the Irish and UK continental margins with the aim of submitting a drilling proposal to the International Ocean Drilling Programe - IODP³ to look at the long-term history of the British-Irish Ice Sheet 

Her external activities include:

• Expert evaluator for European Union FP7 R&D programme “New and renewable sources of energy, Energy efficiency & innovation” (ongoing)
• Expert reviewer (2011) and vice-chair (since 2013) for the FP7 Marie Curie IEF/IIF/IOF fellowship evaluation panels and vice-chair for H2020 and Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship evaluations (ongoing).
• Member of the E-MARSHAL (IGCP-585) project (Earth’s continental MARgins: aSessing the geoHazard from submarine Landslides) and project S4SLIDE (Significance of Modern and Ancient Submarine Slope LandSLIDEs) (IGCP-640)
• Reviewer for leading journals in the field: Nature (top 5%; IF 42.351); Cryosphere (top 10%; IF 5.5); Marine Geology (top 20%, IF 2.7); J. Quaternary Science (top 15%, IF 3.4) and Sedimentary Geology (top 25%, IF 1.8).