Karl Matthias Wantzen holds the UNESCO Chair on “Rivers and Heritage” (River Culture, since 2014) and the transboundary Chair on “Water and Sustainability” by EUCOR – the European Campus (since 2023).
His expertise covers ecology, biodiversity and human nature-interactions, specifically in freshwater socio-ecosystems and their floodplain wetlands. The River Culture Concept (2016), provides an eco-social framework on sustainable riverscape management, documented in the book “River Culture – life as a dance to the rhythm of the Waters” (2023).
As of 2023, he has been appointed by the University of Strasbourg and the Karlsruhe Institut for Technology to coordinate research and training on international and transdisciplinary hydrosystem management, including a MSc. course on “Continental Water Sustainability”.
The Chair follows a transdisciplinary approach, collaborating with different scientific disciplines and private-public partnerships, forming a ‘network of networks’.