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Abstract

Stellar clusters are observed in a variety of galactic environments, from their current formation sites like the disks of the Antennae galaxies to the old globular cluster populations which in the Milky Way mostly reside in the halo. This suggests that the evolution of these puzzling objects may be linked to that of their host galaxy. This thesis explores the formation and evolution of stellar clusters in a cosmological context. For that, analytical models are developed to describe the role of the galactic environment in shaping their demographics. A suite of cosmological, hydrodynamical simulations of Milky Way-mass galaxies from the E-MOSAICS project are used to study when stellar clusters form and how they evolve over cosmic history. These simulations are also employed to estimate the contribution of stellar clusters to the build-up of stellar haloes. Finally, the EMP-Pathfinder simulations are presented, which represent the next generation of simulations of the co-formation and evolution of stellar clusters alongside their host galaxies in a cold, dense cosmic environment. The conclusion drawn from these studies is that stellar clusters are tightly linked to their host cosmic environments. This leads to exciting new future directions that are briefly discussed.