Doctorate from the University of Leiden (2003). Prior to coming to Utrecht, he taught Renaissance Latin and modern history at the universities of St Andrews, Leiden and Amsterdam. He received research fellowships from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, het Institut d’Histoire de la Réformation in Genève, het Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in Wassenaar, and Princeton University Library. In the Spring semester of 2023 he was the Queen Wilhelmina Visiting Professor at Columbia University, New York.