Faculty

The Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) is one of the world’s leading centres for research and teaching on human-environment systems. With currently 38 professorships, over 400 staff and more than 2,000 students, we are a large faculty. The ENR is excellently connected both nationally and internationally and maintains numerous collaborations with partners in academia, society, politics and the foundation sector. The ENR is also regularly very successful in attracting third-party funding.

The Themes of the ENR

Through our work, we see ourselves as bearing a responsibility for the natural foundations of life for people, plants and animals. Five overarching themes shape research at the ENR: At the heart lies the conservation of vital foundations of life such as forests, water, soil, air and biodiversity. Closely tied to this is the question of how these and other natural resources can be used while also protecting them for the long term. These foundations are coming under pressure from global change, which is transforming above all the climate, land use, ecosystems and flows of goods. It also intensifies natural hazards and environmental risks, for which we are developing new strategies of adaptation and resilience. By considering social, ecological and technical dimensions together, we chart pathways for a successful transformation towards sustainability.

We pursue these themes across every spatial and temporal scale – from the local to the global, from the past into the future. Because they can only be understood through the interplay of different perspectives, the professorships and departments of the ENR address them jointly and across disciplinary lines.

Departments and Professorships

Our faculty fosters contemporary and interdisciplinary research and teaching. To this end, we rely on an innovative governance structure and a division-of-labour organisation.

The departments at the Faculty of Environment and Natural Resources are thematically driven networks with specific areas of focus. They operate without additional administrative structures. Within them, the professorships work together across boundaries on strategic questions in research and teaching. Three such networks currently shape the faculty: Forest Sciences, Earth and Environmental Sciences and Environmental Social Sciences and Geography.

The professorships of the ENR cover a broad spectrum of disciplines, spanning the fields of environmental natural sciences, environmental social sciences, geosciences, geography, modelling and remote sensing, as well as hydrology and forest sciences. The goals of the research carried out at the professorships are as varied as the professorships themselves: they range from basic research, through the critical and theoretical reflection on bodies of knowledge, to the development of application-oriented solutions for concrete challenges facing the environment and society. The large number of professorships and their clear disciplinary profiles are the foundation that allows us to cultivate a culture of methodological variety and intensive interdisciplinary exchange at the ENR.

More on the departments and professorships

A Portrait of the Faculty

Professorships

Information and links to the 40 professorships at the faculty

Faculty Administration

Information and contact details

Mathisle Mühle

ENR-internal:
Information and applications