As an archaeologist, I have combined active fieldwork with scientific analysis and evaluation in my research activities from the very beginning. Through my professional career, I have various research focuses. Most important are the research foci on settlement research and rural archaeology in early history and the Middle Ages, which I have been working on for two decades in Germany and abroad, and my research on the Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Siberia, with which I started my academic career. I have always been particularly interested in cross-border issues, both in a geographical and a disciplinary sense. My academic education includes both humanities and natural sciences. I therefore consider archaeological research originally interdisciplinary. Furthermore, I am engaged in the dialogue between Western and Eastern European scientific cultures.