has been studying Jewish Studies, Religious Studies and History, where she first concentrated on the general Jewish history and religion, before she became interested in the vast field of Yiddish Studies. She has delved into various facets of Yiddish culture since – from spending more than a year with the poet and songwriter Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman to interning at New York’s YIVO (Jewish Research Institute) sound archive and touring through Brooklyn’s ultra orthodox Borough-Park.
Janina studied Yiddish language and literature with Cornelia Martyn at Potsdam University, Miriam Hoffman at Columbia University and Dovid Roskies at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She keeps learning from Yiddish experts worldwide and, especially, from conversations with native speakers of different Yiddish dialects in New York, Israel and Chernovitz. Janina conducted ethnographical interviews in Yiddish, transcribed and translated Yiddish interviews (e.g. for the “Voices of the Holocaust”-project, Chicago), digitized the Stonehill collection (field recordings of mostly Yiddish songs) at YIVO, operated the supertitles at New York's Yiddish theater Folksbiene and published her own photographs in Yiddish periodicals. She taught Yiddish at the international Yiddish summer program in Birobidzhan, Russia, but also gave classes on the TaNaKh and Jewish philosophy.
She is currently working on David Kohan’s Jewish music archive at Potsdam University.

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