Rose Fisher
Rose Fisher is an assistant professor of German and Linguistics at Michigan State University and completed her PhD at Penn State University in May, 2025. The Pennsylvania Dutch Dialects Project arose out of her desire to document and compare Pennsylvania Dutch dialects on a large scale. Rose was born into an Amish family in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and her parents decided to leave the Amish church when she was 11 years old which allowed her to complete her education (high school > bachelors degree > PhD) on a typical timeline. As a teaching and research professor at Michigan State, Rose teaches German and Linguistics but also continues the work she began as a graduate student at Penn State doing research on the Pennsylvania Dutch language.
Nolan Rachocki
Nolan is a Graduate student at Michigan State University pursuing a Master’s in German Studies. As a graduate research assistant, he supported the project’s transcription process as well as creating the website.
Helena Stech
Helena is a doctoral student in German Studies at Michigan State University. As a graduate research assistant, she helped with transcribing and organizing the interview data.
Tristan Kuntz
Tristan is an undergraduate student at Michigan State University working on their BA in Linguistics as well as an Anthropology minor. They have an interest in under-documented languages and plans to attend graduate school in the future. They have aided in the transcription process and minor website development.
Connor Bechler
Connor Bechler is a graduate student at Michigan State University pursuing a PhD in Linguistics. Interested in computational sociolinguistics and language documentation, his work with the project has involved the development of an automatic speech recognition pipeline to assist with the transcription, analysis, and publication of Pennsylvania Dutch recordings.
