I’m interested in all aspects of early Christianity and the social, cultural and religious context in which it emerged. My most recent work has been on Mark’s Gospel, the earliest biography of Jesus. I’m fascinated by why a follower of Jesus thought to write a biography of his master, what the use of the biographical form indicates about the way in which he saw Jesus, and how Mark’s work compares with other ancient biographies. Prior to that, I worked on the historical Jesus for several years, and continue to publish books and articles on a range of figures associated with the Christian story – Pontius Pilate, the High Priest Caiaphas, Barabbas, Herod I, Simon of Cyrene, and others. This has inevitably led me to a thorough appreciation of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus. Alongside this I’m also intrigued by the ‘afterlives’ of biblical figures and worked for a decade as editor for the Synoptic Gospels on the Encylopedia of the Bible and its Reception (de Gruyter, Berlin).