Hans is a historian of 18th and 19th-century art and historiography, with a particular interest in themes such as the history of classical receptions, the search for the ‘origins’ of art, and art and climatology.

He studied art history at the universities of Würzburg and Munich, where he completed his doctorate in 2013, with a thesis on 18th-century antiquarianism and the search for the origins of art. Prior to joining Aberdeen in 2020, he worked as a lecturer at the Courtauld Institute and has held teaching and research positions at The Warburg Institute and UCL, among others.

He has published extensively on the history of antiquarianism (Kunst am Ursprung. Das Nachleben der Bilder und die Souveränität des Antiquars (Bielefeld: transcript, 2014)), late 19th-century German art historiography (Wölfflins Bild-Körper. Ideal und Scheitern kunsthistorischer Anschauung (Zurich/Berlin: diaphanes, 2011; Aby Warburg. Fragmente zur Ausdruckskunde, co-ed. (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2015)), and art history and migration (Migrating Histories of Art. Self-Translations of a Discipline, co-ed. (Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter, 2019).