I trained as a historian of the European Middle Ages at the University of Munich (PhD 2006) and am currently Junior Professor for the History of the High and Late Middle Ages at Muenster. My first book concerned early and high medieval scholars, and I still have an interest in cultures of learning, not least in a comparative and transcultural perspective. My current research deals with conflicts and religious polemics within the Latin Christian church in the 12-14th centuries, with a special focus on the entanglement of discourses of plurality concerning interreligious and intra-Christian diversity. Over the years, I have developed an interest in the history of Medieval Studies, not least in the historical and sociological master narratives structuring the study of intellectual history and religious history of the European Middle ages. I have recently published two articles on secularization, modernization and differentiation theory as applied to the European Middle Ages and hope to write more on the twentieth-century uses of the European past and new frameworks for the study of religion.