Open Call: Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) Grants

There are no restrictions on nationality or host institution, language documenters of any nationality can undertake projects in any part of the world with their funding.

Types of Grants 

• Small Grants
  • Small Grants are available to support a variety of documentation activities for endangered languages. The maximum grant is 10,000 €. Small Grants can be used for a range of purposes, such as to carry out fieldwork, develop a pilot project, complete a project already begun, or other documentationrelated goals. Applications may be submitted for the purposes of assessing and demonstrating the feasibility of a larger project, or to undertake preliminary or supplementary research to prepare for, or to advance, the documentation of the endangered language.
  • ELDP especially welcomes applications from documenters from language communities, local scholars and students from the country where the language is spoken/signed, as well as collaborative projects.
  • Small Grant projects last from 6 to 12 months; field trips are normally involved.
• Individual Graduate Scholarship
  • IGS applications are invited from individuals seeking scholarships costs for up to 3 years. In addition to field trip costs, you may apply for a stipend to cover the period of preparing and undertaking field research and processing the results. A stipend provides funding to cover direct living costs and is not a salary. As such, no employment-based taxes should be claimed. They do not fund tuition costs or overhead costs.
  • Individual Graduate Scholarship projects can last from 12 to 36 months; field trips are normally involved.
• Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship
  • IPF applications are invited from individuals seeking their own support costs for up to two years duration. In addition to fieldtrip cost you may apply for your own postdoctoral salary costs. For a postdoctoral position it is expected that you are located at the host institution so you will be taking full advantage of the academic environment for your academic development. For an IPF ELDP expects:
    • a prior track record of documentary work, archiving and research publications by the PI
    • a clear relationship to the host institution in terms of intellectual relationships, as well as academic and technical support
    • a clear mentoring relationship between a staff member at the host institution and the PI
    • clear strategies for both documentation and research for the period of the award.
  • Note that they do not fund overhead costs, parental and sickness pay, salaries for established academic staff where research is an integral part of their existing salaried post (other than in exceptional cases), top-up salaries for established academic staff, including funding of non-salaried vacation periods, e.g. summer salaries. The maximum award is 250,000€.
• Major Documentation Project
  • MDP applications are invited for any projects with a budget over 10,000 €. This grant type is not targeted to a specific career stage.
  • There is a cap of 300,000 €; the panel welcomes modest requests and they strongly encourage you to submit value-for-money proposals that are clearly justified. Applicants for large MDPs must have a proven track record in language documentation and linguistic analysis and have demonstrated the skills to manage such a project. The panel will expect to see evidence of positive outcomes of previous grants, including accessible archived data and previous research.
  • Major Documentation Projects could involve a number of elements, including fieldwork, salary costs of researchers and stipend costs of graduate students (while engaged in the field and in processing work) whose doctoral research will contribute to the project as a whole. You may request support for between 6 and 36 months.
  • ELDP especially welcomes applications from documenters from language communities, local scholars and students from the country where the language is spoken/signed, as well as collaborative projects.
• Legacy Materials Grants
  • Legacy Material Grants are offered to support the digitisation and archiving of legacy materials which are a rich resource for the documentation of the world’s linguistic diversity and are in danger of being lost: recordings of endangered or moribund languages in analogue format which are not part of an existing repository. The collections that are the target of these grants are in private hands or in small repositories without any access to resources for digitisation. The collections may include audio and video recordings (e.g., on tapes or reel to reel and so on), field notes, text collections and photographs1. Typically, these data were collected without an archiving plan in place, and are in or about languages, which are endangered or no longer spoken/signed. Legacy Material Grant projects may develop existing data collections in a variety of ways with a view to making them accessible and discoverable, but the primary focus must be on safeguarding and preserving legacy materials through digitisation and archiving.
  • The maximum grant is 10,000 €. Legacy Grant projects last from 6 to 12 months; projects can only be funded if the materials can be made openly accessible at the Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR).

Who can apply?

• Small Grants
  • ELDP welcomes applications from language documenters of any nationality to undertake projects in any part of the world. Applicants are normally expected to have experience in language documentation work, fieldwork, and/or a suitable academic background. However, as the purpose of Small Grants is to encourage innovation, any individual or group with a keen interest in documenting an endangered language is eligible to apply.
• Individual Graduate Scholarship
  • Applicants should be enrolled in or admitted to a doctoral programme of study (PhD or equivalent); the purpose of the IGS is to support graduate students in doctoral programmes. To be eligible at the time the award is due to commence, awardees must have successfully completed at least one full-time academic year (or equivalent) of postgraduate training (training beyond the Bachelor’s degree). This period of training may include time spent completing an MA.
• Individual Postdoctoral Fellowship 
  • All postdoctoral fellowship applicants will be academically junior researchers and/or at an early stage in their academic career, with qualifications in linguistics and experience in linguistic fieldwork; will propose projects that are undertaken by teams or individuals; and will have secured their PhD no more than five years prior to the proposed start date of this fellowship.
  • Successful applicants’ PhD dissertations must be submitted and approved by the time of the start date of the award.
  • IPF awardees are required to hold their fellowship at an institution other than the institution where their PhD was awarded. If an applicant chooses to hold their fellowship at the same institution where their PhD was awarded, they must provide sound and convincing reasons for this decision.
  • Although IPFs may fund team-based research, the primary grantee is the principal investigator; co-applicants are not allowed for IPF grants.
• Major Documentation Project
  • 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. MDP applications from established principal investigators are welcome.
  • Note that a salary for a main PI who holds an established research position is not eligible for funding. A MDP will also not provide salaries for extended post-doctoral projects.
• Legacy Materials Grants
  • ELDP welcomes applications from language documenters of any nationality to undertake projects in any part of the world. Applicants are normally expected to have experience in language documentation work, fieldwork, and/or a suitable academic background.
• Note:
  • If you have already engaged in fieldwork or documentation work your application will be evaluated with regard to your track record in language documentation and archiving. If you have created documentary records (e.g., audio/video recordings, transcription, translation and annotation of recordings, lexical databases or word lists) they encourage you to ensure your resources are archived and made accessible for evaluation.
  • All grant funds are paid to an accredited institution which administers the grant. For reasons of accountability, the Principal Investigator must not be a director, owner, or similar, of the host institution. This means that directors, founders and heads of financial administration at the host institution cannot apply for grants.

For more information, visit ELDP.