Human Ecology is the study of human-environmental relations in different cultural contexts. Case studies and theoretical perspectives are derived primarily from anthropology, geography, sociology, history, and ecological economics. An intention is to understand human-environmental relations in modern, Western society as a cultural phenomenon and as a global problem of power and distribution. The education in Human Ecology discusses cultural and political aspects of sustainability. It provides a comprehensive and theoretically profound understanding of the interaction between humans and the rest of nature in different periods and different parts of the world.

Current research projects at the Human Ecology Division include studies of cultural and ecological processes in prehistoric Amazonia, the relation between agricultural intensification and societal development in Africa and the Andes, ecologically unequal exchange and environmental load displacement in Latin America, sustainable development of pastoralism in the Himalayas, the global political economy of carbon dioxide emissions through history, and concepts of urban sustainability.