Who we are – The Institute

It is the task of Geography to identify spatial systems on earth and to categorize, as well as genetically, causally and functionally analyse and assess them. Geography also deals with the natural landscape or environment, as well as with the cultural landscape or with the anthropogenically-shaped environment, and thus also the social environment. Geography occupies and interlinks natural as well as humanistic and social scientific fields, and therefore holds a central position among all subjects that deal with the ‘System Earth’.

In a systematic structure of the subject, the following sub-disciplines have to be differentiated: Physical Geography (Climatology, Geoarchaeolgy, Geomorphology, Soil Science)  and Human Geography (Economic Geography, Regional Science, Social Geography).

Beneath these two branches and especially for teaching degree programmes, there is the Didactics of Geography, which focuses on geographic educational goals for schools, the communication processes as characteristic of geography lessons, applicable methods for setting teaching and learning objectives, and the media that is relevant for school lessons. Concurrently, didactics also provides valuable services for the application-oriented degree programmes as it imparts questions of both didactics of planning and methods of geographic communication.

Physical Geography as well as Human Geography is methodologically complemented by Geographical Remote Sensing.

Foundations for understanding processes that structure the earth system and for analysing the formation and sustainable use of essential raw materials are provided by the work field of Geodynamics and Geomaterials Research. It is, therefore, a substantial part of the geosciences and closely linked to various geographical research questions.