• History of religion in Eastern and East Central Europe
• History of empires in Eastern Europe
• Social history in nineteenth-century Russia
• Historiography and historical thought in Russia
• History of East Central Europe (in particular Czech history since 1848)
• Transnational relations in Eastern, Central, and Western Europe

• Born in 1962
• Studies in modern history, Eastern European history, and Slavic studies in Munich, Moscow, and Berlin
• 1990-1995: Research assistant at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute at the Freie Universität in Berlin
• DAAD scholarship holder at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow (1991)
• Dissertation on the conception of Prussia in Russia from the eighteenth to the twentieth century (Freie Universität Berlin 1994)
• 1996-2002: Academic assistant at the Historical Institute of the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany
• 1997/98: Member of a project team at the Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum Geschichte und Kultur Ostmitteleuropas (Humanities Centre for the History and Culture of East Central Europe) in Leipzig
• Habilitation thesis on Roman-Catholic and Russian Orthodox clerics as agents of religious change in the Bohemian Lands and in (Soviet) Russia (Halle 2001)
• 2003- present: Professor of Eastern European History at the Ludwig-Maximilian University (LMU), Munich
• 2009-2011: Research professorship under the LMUexcellent initiative
• since 2012 Speaker of the Graduate School for Eastern and Southeastern European Studies
• 2021-2022: Richard von Weizsäcker Visiting Fellow am St Antony's College, University of Oxford

• Director of the Collegium Carolinum (Research Institute for the History of the Czech Lands and Slovakia)
• Chairman of the German Historical Association (Verband der Historiker und Historikerinnen Deutschlands e. V.)
• Member of the advisory boards of the Deutsches Historisches Institut (German Historical Institute) in Warsaw, of the Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Center for Contemporary History) in Potsdam, of the Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung (Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research), and of the Deutsches Polen Institut (German Institute for Poland) in Darmstadt
• Programme Speaker for the Honours Master's Programme Eastern European Studies (Elite Network Bavaria)
• Programme Speaker of the international research project Cultures of Religion in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Europe at the LMU Munich and at the Charles University in Prague (funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Czech Science Foundation)
• Editor of the journals Bohemia and Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas (Yearbooks on Eastern Europe History)
• Co-editor of the journal Geschichte und Gesellschaft (History and Society)
• Member of the German-Czech and German-Slovak historical commission (Chairman from 2006 to 2012)
• Member of the German Research Foundation's (DFG) Fachkollegium Neuere und Neueste Geschichte der Deutschen (Expert Group on Modern and Contemporary History)
• Member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences
• Spokesman of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies (LMU Munich/University of Regensburg)

Publications