Today's environmental problems climate change, loss of biodiversity, polluted air, land, and water all have their origins to a greater or lesser extent in how we have lived, played and worked. At a time when societies are confronted with the often dramatic consequences of past choices made in the fields of energy, technology, industry, agriculture, urbanisation and consumption, we need a history that casts more light on the ways in which unsustainable human-nature relationships came into being. This means forging stronger connections between social and environmental history. Common Ground opens up a dialogue between two sub-disciplines that to date have remained largely parallel endeavours, bringing together both established and younger scholars from both fields to explore how people's everyday lives have connected to their environments and with what effects.