After completing her schooling she undertook an internship at the newly opened Romano-Germanic Museum down-river in Cologne, as a preparation for studying classics at university.
Partly as a result of her experiences at the museum she instead chose to study ethnology, philology, political sciences and history at the Universities of Cologne and Bonn.
[5] She obtained her habilitation from the University of Mainz in 1993, with financial supported from the DFG: two years later accepted a teaching chair at Augsburg.
This was followed by her election as university president on 8 June 2011 in succession to Wilfried Bottke, the appointment taking effect in October of that year.
[1][7] Her book, Das Okkulte, appeared in 2008 and won for her the "Prize for the Promotion of the Translation of Humanities Literature" ("Preis zur Förderung der Übersetzung geisteswissenschaftlicher Literatur") from (jointly) the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Book-trade Exchange ("Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels") and the German Foreign Ministry.