I studied Estonian language, literature, and classical philology and earned my PhD in classical philology in 2002. From 1996-2017 I was a faculty member in classical philology at the University of Tartu, and professor there from 2012-2017. Since 2017 I have been working as senior researcher at the Under and Tuglas Literature Center of the Estonian Academy of Sciences, and since 2018 as general secretary of the International Association for Neo-Latin Studies, IANLS.

My primary areas of research are humanist Neo-Latin literature in the Baltic region in the early modern period, the emergence of secular written Estonian language in the 17th century and Latin epigraphics in the Baltic region. Since 2001 I have headed many national grant projects. In 2014-2018 I participated as the Estonian representative in the international COST project, “Reassembling the Republic of Letters, 1500-1800: A Digital Framework for Multi-Lateral Collaboration on Europe’s Intellectual History”.

Beside my scholarly publications I have translated from classical, medieval and Neo-Latin into Estonian (Tacitus “On the Origin and Settlement of the Germanic peoples”; Livy “From the Founding of the City”; “Deeds of the Romans”, and 17th century print sources on the founding of the University of Tartu) into Estonian.