In the years 2000–2007 he studied the history of Eastern Europe, Polish studies and the faculty of "South-Eastern Europe" in Jena, Kraków and Lublin. As a scholarship holder of the Volkswagen Foundation, he obtained his doctorate in the project „Bocznymi drogami. Nieoficjalne kontakty społeczeństw socjalistycznych 1956–1989”/"Side roads. Unofficial contacts of socialist societies 1956–1989 ”; for the published doctoral dissertation entitled Das polnische Fenster. Deutsch-polnische Kontakte im staatssozialistischen Alltag Leipzigs 1972–1989 / Polish window. Polish-German contacts in socialist everyday life in Leipzig 1972–1989 received the scientific award of the Polish ambassador. In 2010–2015 he was a researcher and curator at the Museum of the Second World War in Gdańsk. For the next three years, he was the scientific director of the College of Europe at the University of Jena. Since 2018, he has been the curator of the section "Forced Labor during National Socialism" at the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation.