Between 1991 and 1998 she was an assistant professor at the University of Bamberg.
She received her Ph.D.
thesis with a work on complex syntax in Seychelles Creole (Michaelis 1994), and she also worked on tense and aspect in Seychelles Creole, challenging Derek Bickerton's language bioprogram hypothesis.
In more recent work, she has focused on the role of substrate languages in creole genesis (e.g.
Michaelis 2008).
Michaelis is best known for coordinating and coediting the Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures (2013).