Research Grants
The Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) is funded by Arcadia, governed by an international
panel, and administered by SOAS. ELDP plans
to grant a total of £15 million in research grants
for the documentation of endangered languages over
a 10 year period. 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
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