Martin Schmid is an assistant professor for environmental history and interdisciplinary communications at Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt-Graz-Wien in Austria, where he has been a member of the Faculty for Interdisciplinary Studies since 1999. Since 2010, he has served as the director of the Center for Environmental History (ZUG) at the Institute of Social Ecology in Vienna. He has worked as an archaeologist for several years. He holds an MA in History (2002) and a PhD in Environmental History (2007) from the University of Vienna.
A historian by profession, Schmid is fascinated with environmental history as an interdisciplinary field, crossing the "great divide" between humanities and natural sciences. He has published on the history of agro-eco-systems in the early modern period, Austria's environmental history after World War II, and on theoretical concepts for environmental history ("colonization of nature" and "socio-natural sites"). His current research focuses on European environmental history before 1800, and focuses in particular on rivers.
His project at the Center examined the environmental history of the Danube from 1500 onwards.