ELDP: Legacy Materials Grants (LMG)

ELDP: Legacy Materials Grants (LMG)

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP)
Amount: Up to €10,000
Last Updated: September 08, 2025

Summary

The Endangered Language Documentation Programme (ELDP) provides Legacy Materials Grants to support the digitization and archiving of endangered language recordings and materials at risk of being lost. These grants, up to 10,000 €, enable projects lasting 6 to 12 months, focusing on preserving linguistic diversity and making materials accessible. The initiative aims to document languages through fieldwork and create a repository of resources, ensuring that valuable linguistic heritage is preserved for future generations.

Overview

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 Legacy Materials Grants (LMG) 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). 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

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. Who Can Apply?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.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.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 documentation the nature of the project as a contribution to language documentation the training and preparation of the applicant(s) for the proposed project the goals of the project and whether they can be realistically achieved a clear methodology for project work a clear justification of equipment in relation to the methodology attention 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.