Research Grants
The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) is funded by Arcadia (previously known as the Lisbet Rausing Charitable Fund) which has provided £20 million pounds for the Project including £17 million for grant funding. The project is administered by a team located in the Research Office at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).
The selection process for grant applications is overseen by an international
panel of experts who are chaired by Professor Graham Furniss from SOAS.
The Chair of ELDP is conducting a review of all ELDP grants and administrative procedures. The Board of Arcadia will discuss the report resulting from the review in November 2008. We are planning to change the timetable to allow candidates more time to submit their grant applications. It is also possible that certain types of grant will be modified and some new grant types added.
This means that we are not advertising a funding round in July/August of this year, as has happened in previous years. There will be a further notice on this website at the end of November 2008 when we have heard the decision of the Arcadia Board.
So far, ELDP has awarded up to £1.4
million in grants each year, and has funded over
110 teams to document endangered languages across the world.
 In
2007, ELDP awarded £1,395,798 for projects ranging from the documentation
of A’ingae (Cofan) in the Ecuadorian-Columbian border
region to the Ikaan
in Southern Nigeria.
In one funded project, Professor
Jinfang Li and his colleagues (pictured at right)
will document Zou
Lei and A Hou, varieties of Gelao, one of the most endangered
languages in China. More examples of funded projects
can be found at http://www.hrelp.org/grants/projects.
In evaluating applications for grants, we look at the degree
of language endangerment and the urgency of the situation.
We favour projects that will document social and cultural
contexts as well as formal aspects of languages. Projects
that are likely to enhance expertise in field linguistics
for researchers and members of language
communities are also welcomed.
The key objectives of ELDP are:
- to support the documentation of as many endangered languages
as possible in order to facilitate the preservation of
culture and knowledge
- to encourage fieldwork on endangered languages, especially
by younger scholars with skills in language documentation
- to create a repository of language resources for the
linguistic, social science, and language communities
|
