Johanna Mesch is a Swedish linguist and educator, specialised in sign language linguistics. She is a Professor of Sign Language at the Department of Linguistics, Stockholm University, and is recognised for her pioneering research on Swedish Sign Language (SSL) and tactile Swedish Sign Language (tactile STS), especially through corpus creation, pragmatic analysis, and AI‑related synthesis methods.
Early life and education
ohanna Mesch earned her PhD in Sign Language Linguistics from Stockholm University in 1998. In 2012 she received the Swedish academic rank of docent in sign language linguistics at the same institution[1].
Academic career
From 2000 to 2004, she served as senior lecturer at Malmö University and Örebro University. Between 2005 and 2018 she was Associate Professor of Sign Language at Stockholm University, and from January 2019 she holds the post of Professor of Sign Language at Stockholm University’s Department of Linguistics[1]. In 2018 she was a Visiting Professor at Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina in Brazil[1].
Research and contributions
Johanna Mesch is best known for her groundbreaking research on tactile sign language used by deafblind individuals. Her dissertation was one of the first in the world to focus on this form of communication. She has developed and contributed to several corpus projects, including the Swedish Sign Language Corpus and learner corpora for sign language education[1].
She has led major SL corpus projects, including the Swedish Sign Language Corpus (2009–2011) and a learner corpus, as well as resources for tactile signature data. Her work also spans current initiatives in sign language processing, synthesis, and AI-related methods such as generative sign synthesis and neutral methods for sign language representation[1].
Teaching and supervision
She has taught BA and MA courses in sign language linguistics, grammar, corpora, tactile signing, and computational linguistics from 1999 to 2024 at Stockholm University and earlier at Örebro and Malmö universities[1]. She has supervised numerous doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, including main supervision of a learner corpus project (2017–2019) and post‑docs like Sílvia Gabarró‑López (2018–2020) and Hannah Lutzenberger (2024–2026)[1].
Service and leadership
She served as Vice‑chair of the (International) Sign Language Linguistics Society from 2013 to 2022[1]. Mesch has organized multiple high‑profile conferences and workshops: the annual Workshops on Representation and Processing of Sign Languages (LREC), Nordic seminars on sign language corpora and lexica, Stockholm University theme days, and sign language interpretation conferences[1].
In 2020, she received the prestigious Eva och Lars Gårding Prize in Linguistics in recognition of her academic contributions[1]. Her strategic vision has fostered interdisciplinary collaborations across Europe and Latin America, and her consistent presence in international networks has contributed significantly to the global visibility and institutionalisation of sign language research.
- Mesch, J. (2024, December). Short CV. Stockholm University.
- Mesch, J. (n.d.). Johanna Mesch's blog.
- Wikipedia contributors. (n.d.). Johanna Mesch. Wikipedia.
