Before a backdrop of an increasing number of global environmental crises, the interdisciplinary Thematic Research Network "Umwelten - Umbrüche - Umdenken", situated at Heidelberg University, is interested in forming transdisciplinary understandings of catastrophes, considering the action potential that they offer. The Worldmaking sub-project "Epochal Lifeworlds" and the new Käte Hamburger Centre For Apocalyptic and Postapocalyptic Studies in Heidelberg are part of the network, which also cooperates closely with the Rachel Carson Center in Munich. Our task will be to search for answers to the question of how, in past and present, catastrophes, triggering radical changes in our lifeworlds have served as creative crises, to challenge human thinking, thus giving room for action. In this project, then, we are interested in understanding how, in the past and the present, long-term, effective, epochal changes in living environments have taken place and what that means for future action.

We postulate that the diagnosis, prognosis and therapy of systemic crises can only succeed if it is done in an interdisciplinary dialogue and with the participation of the humanities, the social, the life and the natural sciences. Such research needs to be done from a perspective that allows for a longue durée historical view and a broad regional vista, since every crisis is such comprehensive experience that no single science would be able to grasp it in its entirety thus to offer best-practice-solutions. Individual disciplines working on individual problem areas are only ever able to consider partial aspects of a 'big picture' and accordingly, can only design small-scale options for action. The development of a comprehensive, globally and historically informed view is necessary to develop globally oriented models for action.

Accordingly, our Thematic Research Network will encourage not only an informed dialogue across disciplinary boundaries and into the public area, but it will also attempt to develop a common vocabulary and understanding of the matters at hand: in the transdisciplinary conversation between the humanities, the social and the natural and life sciences, but also in an extended dialogue with activists and cultural workers, we hope to be able to analyse the global environmental crisis, as well as its effect on the individual and society: How can natural science, social science and humanities, artistic and political findings on the environmental crisis be related to each other? How can new, creative ways of diagnosing and treating environmental crises and new perspectives on possibilities for action be developed?