the relation between modular forms and galois representations is more popular than ever, thanks to recent progress on the fontaine-mazur conjecture by kisin, and on serre's conjecture by khare and wintenberger. after a short introduction to this circle of ideas, i will discuss ongoing work on higher-dimensional generalizations, in the context of gross' philosophy of modular galois representations. i will attempt to make the talk as self-contained and accessible as possible.