ELDP: Individual Graduate Scholarship (IGS) Grant

ELDP: Individual Graduate Scholarship (IGS) Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP)
Last Updated: September 02, 2025

Summary

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) offers the Individual Graduate Scholarship (IGS) to support graduate students in documenting endangered languages. The scholarship funds cover fieldwork and living costs for projects lasting 12 to 36 months. Applicants must be enrolled in a doctoral program and demonstrate a clear methodology and institutional support. Successful projects will create accessible linguistic resources, contributing significantly to the preservation of endangered languages globally.

Overview

Note: Deadline for submission of application forms is 1st October 2025, 5pm CEST Deadline for submission of support statements is 15th October 2025, 5pm CEST Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) Goals The goal of the Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) is to support the documentation and preservation of endangered languages globally. To this end we give grants worldwide to individuals to document endangered languages. We provide funding for documentation projects led by individuals such as linguists, linguistic anthropologists and community members with skills in linguistic documentation. The funds allow grantees to undertake fieldwork to record speakers/signers of endangered languages on audio and video, compiling a documentary collection of an endangered language. These documentary collections are then archived and preserved and are made freely available through the digital online Endangered Languages Archive (ELAR). Objectives Our key objectives are: to support the documentation of as many endangered languages as possibleto encourage fieldwork on endangered languagesto create a repository of resources for linguistics, social science, and the language communitiesto make the documentary collections freely available Individual Graduate Scholarship (IGS) 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. Individual Graduate Scholarship projects can last from 12 to 36 months; field trips are normally involved. Potential Projects Outcomes of funded projects should include a collection of materials such as digital video and audio recordings, texts of various kinds. Projects should ideally result in documentation materials that are: accessible to and usable by members of the language community and the wider scientific communityas 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, annotation and analysis of such materialsrepresented and described using standard formats, conventions and theories in order to maximise access and useflexible and cumulative, to allow data to be annotated and supplementedin archivable form to provide for long-term preservation of the datacontributions to the on-going development of documentation methodology Projects should create materials in several types of media: videoaudioimageswritten (e.g. transcription, annotation, notes, description/analysis)metadata (structured data about the primary and secondary materials) Together, these will form the language documentation and may contain a range of linguistic materials, such as: spoken language in a variety of styles and contexts, recorded (in video and/or audio), with transcriptions, translations and notes and annotationswritten texts in a variety of styles, with transcriptions, translations and annotationsrelevant sociological and cultural informationformal linguistic resources such as dictionary and sketch-grammarpedagogical materials

Eligibility

We've imported the main document for this grant to give you an overview. You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Who Can Apply?ELDP welcomes applications from researchers of any nationality to undertake projects in any part of the world. 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.To apply to our program you need to be affiliated with a host institution such as a university, which is a registered entity and has experience in administering grants.Note that all grant funds are paid to an accredited institution which administers the grant. Attention is especially paid to these criteria: the degree of endangerment of the language(s) and the urgency of the documentationthe nature of the project as a contribution to language documentationthe training and preparation of the applicant(s) for the proposed projectthe goals of the project and whether they can be realistically achieveda clear methodology for project worka clear justification of equipment in relation to the methodologyattention to ethical issues attention to archiving and the open-access requirement clear evidence of institutional support (what the institution will provide for you).

Ineligibility

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.Although documentation and revitalisation are linked, projects aimed only at revitalisation without significant emphasis on documentation will not be funded.We do not fund tuition costs or overhead costs.