• Vita

    I was born and raised in Berlin and studied History, Latin and English in Freiburg. I then moved to Cologne to complete my doctorate, writing a thesis examining the multifaceted representation of Roman emperors in various media, as well as the socio-political groups that influenced these images.

    For my Habilitation, also completed in Cologne, I explored how institutions took shape in Archaic Greece, examining issues such as how the notion evolved that there were to be holders of institutional power who would have certain rights and duties. To this end, I examined the city-states of Crete, as their inscriptions, literary evidence and archaeological findings offer an outstanding, yet hitherto rather under-researched, case study.

    Recently, I had been thinking more and more about the Romans again, specifically the extent to which the emperor was in structural competition with prominent senators of his time due to the system of the Principate. I considered whether this should be seen as a significant cause of the – frequently deadly – manifestations of friction within this system.

    Throughout my career, I have greatly enjoyed interdisciplinary collaboration, drawing inspiration from models based in sociology, political science and anthropology, among other fields. 

  • Forschungsprojekt

    Gesetzesinschriften im frühen Griechenland zwischen Prinzipien- und Regelorientierung: Reibungsflächen persönlicher und institutioneller Macht

    My present research focuses on the emergence and development of socio-political orders in early Greece, particularly during the Archaic and Early Classical periods (c. 700–450 BC), when the 'citizen state', or 'polis', emerged. I am particularly interested in the role that the cultural practice of inscribing normative statutes in monumental form played in this process; statutes which claimed to formulate rules that were binding on the entire community.

    Some facets central to understanding early laws and communitisation in general seem to have been insufficiently addressed thus far. These include:

    (1) the reasons for the shift from a principle-oriented to a rule-oriented approach observed in these documents, and its consequences; for the inscribed laws offer numerous instances that point to existing areas of friction between institutional and personal power.

    (2) the challenge how we can model the actors who drove this institutionalisation forward. Since early Greek sources do not enable us to grasp real individuals, I developed a 'sociology of cartel-formation' based on the works of G. Simmel and Th. Geiger: a heuristic tool for describing patterns of competition and cooperation in antiquity and beyond.

    (3) certain characteristics of the legal inscriptions themselves, regarding their materiality, language and signal character; for at that time, inscribing normative rules in a monumental manner and in prose was truly a completely new cultural technique.

  • Einschlägige Veröffentlichungen

    Das archaische Kreta. Institutionalisierung im frühen Griechenland. Berlin/Boston 2015.

    Das Kartell. Ein Modell soziopolitischer Organisation in der griechischen Archaik, in: Seelentag, G./ Meister, J.B. (Hg.) Konkurrenz und Institutionalisierung in der griechischen Archaik. Stuttgart 2020, 61–94.

    (mit J.B. Meister) Konkurrenz und Institutionalisierung. Neue Perspektiven auf die griechische Archaik, in: Seelentag, G./ Meister, J.B. (Hg.) Konkurrenz und Institutionalisierung in der griechischen Archaik. Stuttgart 2020, 11–38.

    Die Entstehung von Institutionen der Konfliktregulierung im archaischen Griechenland aus Kooperation der Eliten, in Freund, St. (Hg.) Institutionalisierung und Wandel von Herrschaft. Organisation, Strukturen und Zentralisierung. Stuttgart 2023, 99–132.

    Citizenship and Austerity in Archaic and Classical Crete, in Cecchet, L./ Lasagni, Ch. (Hg.) Citizenship Imagined – Citizenship Practiced. Citizens and Non-Citizens in the Ancient Greek World. Stuttgart 2025, 69–87.