The environment surrounds people in their everyday existence. It is above, below, around and within us. As a basic historical category, the environment, or Um-Welt in German, encompasses the exploration of past attributions of meaning, events and structures within the framework of the complex interrelationships between people and the rest of nature. As a discipline, environmental history also looks at how these interrelationships influence our present.

Environmental history at the University of Augsburg covers the time span from antiquity to the present and from the historical recording of climate change, eating habits and contamination to the ecological side of the economists of the Enlightenment. It is anchored both regionally and globally. The Environmental History Network meets regularly and in various formats at the IEK. Anyone who is interested is welcome at any time.