My main research interests are galaxy evolution and dynamics, with emphasis on what can be learned from the nearby Universe, and in particular from our own Galaxy.

The assembly process of a galaxy leaves imprints in the present-day spatial distribution, motions, ages and chemical abundances of its stars. For the Milky Way and its satellites we have direct access to this information for millions of individual stars. My research thus far has focused on characterizing these fossil signatures from a theoretical point of view, and on using observational data to recover those fossils and thereby reconstruct the formation history of our Galaxy. Besides Galactic archaeology, I am also interested on the nature of dark-matter. I have worked on the distribution of dark-matter around the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies using the motions of stars, and on predictions for direct (and indirect) detection.