The University of Graz, which was founded in 1585, is Austria’s second oldest university and one of the largest in the country. With some 31,500 students and 4,000 employees in six faculties the University of Graz is a key player in the university landscape of Austria. The University of Graz strives to concentrate existing highly socially relevant disciplinary focuses at faculty level in university research core areas. Especially the research core area “Environment and Global Change” (EGC) is of high societal relevance.
The focus of EGC lies on the analysis and monitoring of climate and environmental change and its impacts, on the analysis of the role of human beings and the identification of transition paths towards sustainable regional and organizational development and innovation. More than twenty research groups from climate- and environmental physics, meteorology, environmental chemistry, hydrogeology, environmental biology, environmental economics and sociology, geography and regional research, systems sciences and sustainability management, environmental ethics and environmental law collaborate in five research foci.
A key department within the core research area EGC is the Department of Environmental Systems Sciences, which will be organizing rev2025.