Studied Comparative Literature, German Languages and Literature, and Classics at the Freie Universitaet Berlin, the Aristotle University of Salonika, Greece, and at Stanford University; Master of Arts in 1995 (with honors).1995-1998 scholarship in the Doctoral Program in Ancient Greek and Latin at the University of Heidelberg. 1998-2001 Lecturer and Teaching Fellow of Latin in the Department of Ancient Studies at University of Greifswald. Completed Doctoral Program in Ancient Greek and Latin at the University of Heidelberg in 2001 (summa cum laude); PhD thesis on fairy tales and myths from Homer to Kafka and Walter Benjamin. Subsequently Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Professor of Latin in the Department of Ancient Studies at University of Greifswald; from 2002 to 2003 co-chair of the Executive Board of the Interdisciplinary Center for Gender Studies. 2004 DAAD Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Siena, Florence and Rome, Italy. 2005-2008 Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature at Goethe University Frankfurt (Main); 2009 habilitation with thesis on ancient myths and their transformation in the 20th century cultural context (2008); scholarly presentation on the master-disciple-relationship as a mode of literary, philosophical and religious self-fashioning since antiquity (2009). Since 2007 Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. 2007-2010 research project “Masters and Disciples” in cooperation with Harvard University. Since October 2008 Professor of Ancient Religion, Culture and their Reception History at the Institute for the Scientific Study of Religion at the Freie Universitaet Berlin.