From 2010 to 2014 I was a student in history and economics at the University of Mannheim and continued my studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales Paris and the University of Heidelberg, where I attained my master's degree in 2016 with a specialization in ancient history. In both my bachelor's and my master's thesis I took interest in ancient festivities and spectacles, writing about animal hunts in the early Roman Empire and about royal parades by hellenistic kings.
PhD-Project
In Late Antiquity, animal hunts were both immensely popular as a form of public entertainment in the urban centres of the Roman Empire and harshly criticized by Christian writers who saw the public slaughter of animals for spectacle as a pagan ritual that morally corrupted its audience. In viewing animal hunts as a contested cultural practice in a changing society my PhD-project aims to investigate the various factors impacting both practice and perception of animal hunts in Late Antiquity. It is also a case study in how late antique society dealt with the conflict between traditional Roman culture and new Christian imperatives.
My project is supervised by Prof. Dr. E.A. Hemelrijk and Dr. S.M.J. Remijsen at the University of Amsterdam and funded by the Heinrich-Böll foundation. With my research, I am part of the Amsterdam Centre for Urban History.