Prof. Mieder has special expertise in the areas of German and international folklore, the history of the German language, the Middle Ages, and especially the study of proverbs. Since 1984 he has been the editor of Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship, an annual book that is published by the University of Vermont with subscriptions from around the world. Proverbium celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2013 with volume 30. Prof. Mieder is also the editor of the Supplement Series to Proverbium.

While Wolfgang Mieder has written several books on German literary matters as well as fairy tales and folk songs, he is an internationally recognized scholar of over one hundred books on proverbs, among them Sprichwort-Wahrwort (1992), Proverbs Are Never Out of Season: Popular Wisdom in the Modern Age (1993), Proverbs: A Handbook (2004), and "Proverbs Speak Louder than Words": Folk Wisdom in Art, Culture, Folklore, History, Literature, and Mass Media (2008). In addition, Wolfgang Mieder is the author of more than three hundred articles on proverbs. He has also been guest professor at the University of Freiburg in Germany and at the University of California at Berkeley.