I am a theoretical physicist with interests lying at the intersection of general relativity, cosmology, and quantum field theory. My research is primarily driven by the question of which theories might underpin the origin, evolution, and structure of the Universe. So far, this has drawn my focus to the study of degrees of freedom, investigating how they behave in the presence of interactions or beyond the strong coupling, where conventional perturbative methods are no longer applicable. In particular, my work includes massive gauge theories, such as massive, self-interacting, vector, and Kalb-Ramond fields. I am also working on higher-derivative theories of gravity, investigating how the appearance of pathological modes, known as ghosts, can be avoided with the help of boundary conditions. My interests further extend to dark matter and dark energy, connections between noncommutative geometry and cosmology, and means to distinguish between various modified theories of gravity.