Born in Prague, Czech Republic, Johana Gallup studied German and English Language and Literature at the Philosophic Faculty of the Charles University in Prague, with one-year study-abroad programs at University of Vienna and at the University of Texas at Austin. She was program coordinator in the Soros Center for Contemporary Arts in Prague, and secretary at the Czech-German Commission of Historians. Since 1995, she has been a freelance translator with a focus on art, art history, and architecture in Prague and Berlin, and in 2009-2010 she worked as project coordinator for communications at Zipp – Czech-German Cultural Projects, an initiative of German Federal Cultural Foundation. Since then, Gallup has worked as freelance cultural manager on other Czech-German cultural projects. She joined the Fellow Selection Department of the American Academy in Berlin in September 2011.