Currently on academic leave as a senior teaching and research assistant. He is working on an SNSF research project on looting and stolen goods from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. 

His current post-doctoral research project investigates looting and the stealing of goods during times of war, and examines the related economic profiles, legal norms and legitimisation in the Middle Ages and the start of the early modern period from economic, historical and cultural viewpoints. What are the putative reasons for looting? What norms and legitimisation for the looting and stealing of cultural items develop over time? What narratives find their way into the corresponding text and image sources? How are these passed on? The aim is to provide a cultural and military-historical account using social and economic historical methods to make a contribution towards the investigation of western European war economy. The geographical area under investigation is restricted to a core area of France, Burgundy, Lorraine and the Swiss-Swabian region of the High and Upper Rhine. The project also looks at additional case studies on the looting of Constantinople in 1204, and the conquest and destruction of Tenochtitlan by Spanish troops under Cortés in 1521. Some preliminary work on individual aspects of the project has already been published in articles. The objective of the project is to complete an extensive source-based monograph of approximately 500 pages.