Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE)
Photo: Prof. Dr. Hans Gebhardt
The Heidelberg Center for the Environment (HCE) combines a wide range of environmental perspectives including natural sciences, social sciences and cultural studies. It focuses on humans’ physical and socio-cultural environments as well as the specific dynamics of these environments, and also on how these dynamics interact with each other. In recent history, the intensity of this interaction has strongly increased in many areas, which challenges us to take a comprehensive approach in examining and integrating various academic perspectives into our research.
Interdisciplinary and integrative cooperation
The complexity and cultural dependence of modern environmental problems goes beyond the analytical framework of any one single method or discipline. For this reason, the HCE employs a model of interdisciplinary and integrative cooperation. Heidelberg University is renowned, also at the international level, as a place where this overall view of the environment is developed and integrated into teaching methods and public discourse on the issue.
