I am a senior Research Associate (part-time), working on Middle Dutch and Middle English phonology. My current focus is on Romance loanwords and their influence on word and sentence phonology in Dutch and English, using Middle Dutch manuscripts including my earlier text edition of the  14th century Middle Dutch manuscript (Ms Marshall 29) which is kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Data are taken directly from manuscripts or from diplomatic text editions. I am involved in the project Pertinacity in phonology: synchrony, diachrony, processing, modelling (funded by EPSRC EP/X026035/1). As the Linguistics Organising Tutor (LOT) for St Edmund Hall I teach general linguistics and historical linguistics. Furthermore, I co-organise the biennial Oxford/Groningen Old Frisian Summer School (see blog post). I am also Librarian for Linguistics, Dutch and Frisian at the Bodleian Libraries (part-time).

Recent Publications

Sytsema, Johanneke & Aditi Lahiri (2025). Romance Loans in Middle Dutch and Middle English: Retained or Lost? A Matter of Metre. Transactions of the Philological Society (in press). DOI: 10.1111/1467-968X.12309.

Lahiri, Aditi & Johanneke Sytsema (2018). Metrical Grouping and Cliticisation in Middle Dutch: Evidence from Verse. Transactions of the Philological Society. DOI – 10.1111/1467-968X.12124.

Sytsema, Johanneke & Aditi Lahiri (2018). Open Syllable Lengthening in Middle Dutch: Evidence from Verse. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 30/2. 167-212.

Sytsema, Johanneke (2015) Diplomatic text edition of ms Marshall 29 (Bodleian Library, Oxford).

Sytsema, Johanneke, Janet Grijzenhout and Aditi Lahiri (2014). Middle Dutch Back Vowels in Rhymes. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 17/2: 157-183.

Sytsema, Johanneke (2014). Codex Unia: edition and reconstruction. Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 73: 497-526.

Sytsema, Johanneke (2012). Diplomatyske Utjefte Kodeks Unia (Diplomatic edition of Codex Unia).