Dr. Chris Johnson

David C. “Chris” Johnson has been involved in research on German dialects in Kansas and Missouri since 1990. He completed his PhD in Germanic Languages & Literatures in 1994, with his research focusing at that time on Volga German dialects of Ellis County, Kansas.  While working in various administrative positions at KU over the next 25 years, he continued his dialect research as a Courtesy Assistant Professor with Germanic Languages & Literatures and later with the Department of German Studies, expanding his scope of research to include the entire state of Kansas and eventually Missouri. With the advent in the mid-1990s of web-based publishing, clickable maps, and digital audio technology, he created and supported the online Linguistic Atlas of Kansas German Dialects for over 20 years. Since retirement, he has discontinued the online atlas and has moved the digital audio content to the German Dialect Recordings from Kansas and Missouri community under the Department of Slavic, German and Eurasian Studies at KU ScholarWorks, a more sustainable long-term storage solution for open-source resources. Since retirement, Chris has held a research affiliate appointment with German Studies and then SGES and has been actively working with 40 years of German dialect audio recordings from Kansas and Missouri to redact and post additional content to ScholarWorks.