abstract: I discuss minimal immersions of closed surfaces of genus at least 2 into hyperbolic 3-manifolds with prescribed data in the cotangent bundle of the Teichmuller space of the surface. We establish both area minimising and unstable minimal immersions by proving multiple existence for the Gauss – Codazzi equations. Furthermore, we describe their asymptotic behaviour in terms of a given parameter, and show that (at the limit) the (hyperbolic) metric induced by the immersion acquires conical singularities in the unstable case.