• Old and Middle English 

• Lexico-semantics  

• Language contact, variation, and change 

• Medieval Latin 

• Manuscript studies, Palaeography 

• Corpus linguistics 

I received both my BA (English, Computational linguistics, Japanese) and MA (English, Medieval studies) from the University of Zurich and from 2019-2024 I was a research and teaching assistant at the chair of Prof. Olga Timofeeva. My PhD project "Lexical loss, survival, and innovation in Middle English", supervised by Olga Timofeeva and Louise Sylvester, examined patterns and mechanisms of large-scale changes in the vocabulary of Middle English (ca. 1150-1500). In addition to lexico-semantics, historical linguistics, and the Middle Ages in general, I am also interested in Computer-Mediated Communication and online fandom, which I was able to explore as a research assistant on Prof. Moniek Kuijpers' SNF-funded projects  "Mining Goodreads: A text-similarity approach to measure reader absorption" and "Shared Reading in the Age of Digitalization" at the University of Basel's Digital Humanities Lab between 2019-2023. Since February 2025, I am working as a postdoctoral researcher on the SNF-funded project "Waxing and Waning Words".

I am also part of the organising committee of the Junge Zürcher Mediävistik (JZM), a group of doctoral students and postdocs working on the Middle Ages. Twice a semester we hold a symposium where we present and discuss our research, followed by an apéro. Advanced MA students, PhD students, and postdocs based in Switzerland or abroad who are interested in joining us are always welcome! 

I taught two sessions at the international Summer School in the History of English, hosted by Charles University Prague from 30 June - 4 July 2025 https://oajd.ff.cuni.cz/sshoe/

Thanks to a generous UZH Doc.Mobility grant, I was able to visit the English historical linguists at the University of Turku (Matti Peikola, EModGral team) in fall 2024, and my PhD co-supervisor Louise Sylvester at the University of Westminster in fall 2023. 

Publications: 

• Vogelsanger, Johanna. 2023. “A Ghost in the Thesaurus. Some Methodological Considerations Concerning Quantitative Research on Early Middle English Lexical Survival and Obsolescence”. Early Middle English 5: 57–97. (assigned to a back issue, published early 2025)
• Vogelsanger, Johanna. 2025. “Obsolescence and Innovation in the Middle English Religious Lexicon”. Transactions of the Philological Society 123: 137–162. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12310.

• Mambelli, Gloria and Johanna Vogelsanger. 2024. “The church and the manor: Assessing and comparing the effects of language contact on two Middle English lexical domains.” Lexis (Special Issue 3). https://doi.org/10.4000/12izb 

Upcoming: 

• The 25. Studientag Englisches Mittelalter, 23-25 October 2025 https://www.es.uzh.ch/en/Subsites/events/SEM2025.html 

• The 14th International Conference on Middle English, 3-6 June 2026 https://www.icome2026.uzh.ch/en.html

I am happy to supervise BA and MA theses in any of the areas listed under “Research Interests”, and I am open to other topics as well. Feel free to write me an e-mail so we can set up a meeting to discuss your ideas. Here are some of the theses I have supervised in the past: 

For publications, see ORCiD or ZORA 

Junge Zürcher Mediävistik