Application information

This document describes the ELDP grants programme, how to choose a type of grant, and how to apply.

1. The Engangered Languages Documentation Programme
2. Types of grants available
3. Application procedure
4. Timetable
5. Contacts

1. Endangered Languages Documentation Programme

The Programme

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) offers research grants to support documentation of the world's endangered languages in collaboration with language communities.

ELDP is a component of the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project (http://www.hrelp.org/). It is governed by an international panel, and administered by the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. It plans to award a total of £15 million in research grants over a ten-year period.

The Programme is a response to the rapid rate of extinction of human languages throughout the world. The extinction of any language is not only a loss of cultural expression for the community involved, but also a loss of human knowledge and diversity of traditions.

Objectives

ELDP aims to preserve the diversity of human languages by supporting documentation of as many languages as possible, together with their social and cultural contexts, by:

• encouraging fieldwork on endangered languages, especially by younger scholars skilled in language documentation
• fostering the creation and preservation of a body of language resources for use by the linguistic and other social sciences, and language communities

Criteria

Applications for grants are assessed for their intellectual quality, the degree of language endangerment, the urgency of the issues they raise, their relation to a language’s social and cultural contexts, and their prospects for raising levels of knowledge of the language and expertise in field linguistics, including among members of the language community. Projects should result in documentation materials that are:

• accessible to and usable by members of the language community and the wider scientific community
  
• as comprehensive as possible, including a range of recordings of language usage from everyday conversation to narrative, oratory, ceremonial speech, and verbal art, as well as transcription and analysis of such materials
  
• represented and described using standard formats, conventions and theories in order to maximise access and use
  
• cumulative, to allow data to be annotated and supplemented
  
• secure against abuse, to protect the rights of the language community
  
• properly archived, to provide long-term preservation of the data
  
• contributions to the development of documentation methodology and the understanding of language endangerment

ELDP is an international programme and welcomes applications from researchers of any nationality to undertake projects in any part of the world. Applicants should be researchers with qualifications in linguistics and experience in linguistic fieldwork (including suitably qualified graduate students). Projects may be undertaken by teams or individuals.

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2. Types of grants

• Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship
  
• Major Documentation Project
  
• Individual Graduate Studentship
  
• Pilot Project Grant
  
• Field Trip Grant

Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship (IPF)

IPF applications are invited from individuals seeking their own support costs for up to two years (or if adequately justified, three years) duration. In addition to fieldwork costs, you may seek salary costs for the period. We anticipate that all postdoctoral fellowship applicants will be academically junior and/or young researchers. You should normally have secured your PhD no more than five years prior to the proposed start date of this fellowship. If successful, you will be required to hold your fellowship at an institution other than the institution where you undertook postgraduate studies.

Nearly all IPF grants awarded to date have been between £50,000 and £100,000.

Major Documentation Project (MDP)

MDP applications by established principal investigators are welcomed. Your application could involve a number of elements including fieldwork, salary costs of researchers and stipend costs of graduate students (while engaged in the field and processing work) whose doctoral research will contribute to the project as a whole. You may request support for between six months and three years. Support for four years may be considered in exceptional cases. Applications for small as well as fairly large grants will be considered.

Most MDP grants awarded to date have been between £40,000 and £130,000.

Individual Graduate Studentship (IGS)

IGS applications are invited from individuals seeking their own support costs for up to two years (or if adequately justified, three years). In addition to field trip costs, you may a seek a stipend to cover the period while undertaking field research and processing the results. To be eligible at the time the award is due to commence, support is only available to individuals who will have successfully completed at least one full-time academic year (or equivalent) of postgraduate training. This period of training may include time spent on completing an MA (prior to a PhD). Please note that a stipend provides funding to cover direct living costs and is not a salary. As such, no employment-based taxes should be claimed.

The average IGS grant has been no more than £15,000

Pilot Project (PPG)

PPG applications may be submitted for the purposes of assessing and demonstrating the feasibility of a larger project. The aim of this grant is to provide "pump priming" in order to enable you to progress to a full and more elaborate project. The duration of the PPG project should be between 6 -12 months and field trips will normally be involved.

It is expected that the maximum grant available for a PPG will be £6,000.

Field Trip Grant (FTG)

FTG applications may be submitted for fieldwork trips between 6 and 12 months in duration. In such cases, it is presumed that, at the time of the fieldwork, you have already undertaken preliminary or supplementary research to prepare for or advance the documentation of the language(s) to be documented; furthermore, the language(s) should either be closely related to well documented languages or already be the subject of substantial documentation.

It is expected that the maximum grant available for a FTG will be £10,000.

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3. Application procedure

Eligibility

ELDP welcomes applications from researchers of any nationality to undertake projects in any part of the world. Applicants should be researchers with qualifications in linguistics and experience in linguistic fieldwork (including suitably qualified graduate students). Projects may be undertaken by teams or individuals.

Application Forms

For each type of grant, an application pack (set of documents and forms) is available at http://www.hrelp.org/grants/apply/packages/. Documents in the pack have advice for writing and submitting the application.

Before applying, you must register the details of the applicant online at:

• http://www.hrelp.org/myhrelp/

Institutional links

Applicant(s) should have, or be in a position to make, a formal link with a university or comparable research institution. The institution will be expected to act as host institution and administer the grant, be responsible for its proper expenditure, and submit regular and authenticated accounts of the expenditure.

Training workshop

ELDP recognises that language documentation is a new field which involves a range of new understandings about how language materials are collected and represented. To assist grantees ELDP offers a one-week training workshop aimed at promoting good practice in language documentation. The workshop deals with the theory and practice of language documentation and will cover a range of topics and practical activities. We will fund the costs of attending the workshop so you should not include these in your budget. We normally require the principal investigator of IPF, MDP and IGS grants to attend the workshop before starting fieldwork. It may be possible for an alternative or additional team member to attend.

See http://www.hrelp.org/events/workshops/ for a link to this year's workshop.

Revitalisation projects

ELDP's objective is language documentation. Although documentation and revitalisation are linked, projects aimed only at revitalisation without significant emphasis on documentation will not be funded.

Nevertheless, applicants are encouraged to create documentation in ways that assist communities to maintain and strengthen their languages. This may increase the possibilities for combining ELDP funds with revitalisation funds from other sources.

Assessment

All applications are assessed by ELDP's international panel. See http://www.hrelp.org/aboutus/staff/panel/ for the panel membership. Panel members have been selected to serve in their capacity as scholars and researchers in the field. Based on its assessment, the panel will submit its final recommendations to Arcadia. In making its assessments at the full application stage, the panel may consult independent referees. You may identify people who you do not wish the panel to consult. We will keep your request confidential.

For further details on the assessment criteria refer to the guidance notes in the application packages.

Project Outcomes

The outcomes and products of funded projects will include a corpus of materials such as digital audio and video recordings, text collections, dictionaries and grammatical sketches. The core of a documentation is a corpus of audio and/or video materials with time-aligned transcription, multi-tier annotation, translation into a language of wider communication, and relevant metadata on context and use of the materials.

All materials generated by your project must be deposited with the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR) at SOAS. See the Guidelines document in the application package for further details.

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4. Timetable

Deadlines

This information last updated 15 July 2007

References

You should ensure that referees receive a complete copy of your full application in sufficient time to comment. Referees should use the correct form, and send one electronic copy directly to ELDP no later than midnight (GMT) on the relevant deadline. We will not consider late references.

Announcement of results

The results of applications will be announced in the following March. For FTG applications submitted in May, the results will be announced in the next July.

Starting date

Projects must commence within 12 months of the date of the initial offer letter.

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5. Contacts

For further information, and application forms, see http://www.hrelp.org/grants/

Email: eldp@soas.ac.uk

Endangered Languages Documentation Project
Research Office
School of Oriental and African Studies
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square
London WC1H 0XG
UK