• 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 since 2019 I have been working as 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, examines 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. 

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! 

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. 

In June 2024 I taught a half-day course on “The Evolution of English: From Medieval to Modern” at Kanti Baden. 

Publications: 

• 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 

• Vogelsanger, Johanna. 2023. “Survival Factors in the early Middle English Lexicon.” English Language and Linguistics 27(4), 661-691. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1360674323000072 

Upcoming: 

• BA seminar on “Bad Language” in spring semester 2025 

• Postdoc in the SNF-funded project “Waxing and waning words: Lexical variation and change in Middle English”(WAW-ME) from February 2025 

I am happy to supervise BA theses in any of the areas listed under “Research Interests”. 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