Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project

Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project
Name	Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project
Formation	2005
Founder	Hans Rausing
Type	Philanthropic grant program
Location	Cambridge
Region served	Worldwide

Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Project is a philanthropic grant program established to support documentation of endangered languages worldwide. The program provides funding, training, and logistical support to linguists, archivists, and community researchers working on language documentation in regions such as Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. It operates in collaboration with universities, cultural institutions, and archival repositories to preserve primary linguistic materials and foster access for scholars and communities.

History

The project was established by Swedish philanthropist Hans Rausing and launched with advisory input from institutions like the University of Cambridge, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the British Library, the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, and the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme. Early phases involved partnerships with the National Science Foundation, the European Research Council, the Smithsonian Institution, the Australian National University, and the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics. Notable advisors and collaborators over time have included Julian Treasure, David Crystal, Noam Chomsky, Nicholas Evans, Suzanne Romaine, William Labov, and Mary Haas. Development milestones involved cooperation with the British Library Sound Archive, the Bodleian Libraries, Yale University, Harvard University, Oxford University, and the Library of Congress.

Objectives and Scope

The project’s objectives emphasize documentation, archiving, and capacity building through grants to researchers affiliated with institutions such as UCLA, the University of Toronto, the University of Copenhagen, the University of Melbourne, the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, and SOAS University of London. Scope includes support for fieldwork in regions covered by institutions like the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, CNRS, Humboldt University of Berlin, the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan), and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. The program targets languages at risk as identified by UNESCO, SIL International, Ethnologue, and the Endangered Languages Project, and funds activities ranging from lexical databases and grammars to audio-visual corpora and community language materials.

Funding and Governance

Funding originated from the Rausing family endowment with advisory oversight including trustees and partners from the Leverhulme Trust, the Wellcome Trust, the British Academy, the Royal Society, the Ford Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. Governance structures have drawn on precedents set by philanthropic entities like the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Rockefeller Foundation, while employing assessment frameworks used by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the European Commission. Administrative coordination has involved staff and consultants with prior affiliations to Cambridge University Press, the British Library, and the International Council on Archives.

Projects and Initiatives

Grant-funded projects include documentation initiatives in collaboration with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, the Arctic Studies Center, the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, and the Institute of Linguistics at Moscow State University. Initiatives supported field teams linked to the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the University of Waikato, the University of the Philippines, the University of São Paulo, and the National University of Singapore. The project funded creation of digital corpora deposited with the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS, the Pacific and Regional Archive for Digital Sources in Endangered Cultures, the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America at the University of Texas at Austin, and the PARADISEC repository. Specific outputs include grammars, dictionaries, pedagogical materials, audio-visual collections, and orthography development in partnership with entities like SIL International, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, and the International Phonetic Association.

Partnerships and Collaborations

Collaborations span museums, universities, and NGOs including the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the Australian Museum, the Field Museum, the American Philosophical Society, and the Royal Anthropological Institute. Scholarly collaborations have involved the Linguistic Society of America, the Association for Linguistic Typology, the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme, the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, and the World Oral Literature Project. Community-facing partnerships have included First Nations organizations, Māori language initiatives, the Hawaiian Language Office, Sami parliaments, and Amazonian indigenous federations. Technical collaborations have been cultivated with OLAC, DARIAH, CLARIN, and the Digital Preservation Coalition.

Impact and Reception

The project’s grants contributed to documentation recognized by scholars such as R. M. W. Dixon, Arienne Dwyer, Claire Bowern, and K. David Harrison, and informed exhibits at institutions like the British Museum, the National Museum of Scotland, the Australian National Maritime Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. Outputs have been cited in publications from Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, Routledge, and Brill, and used in curricula at universities including Harvard, Stanford, and McGill. Reception among activist and academic communities—represented by groups such as the American Anthropological Association, Cultural Survival, Survival International, and the Indigenous Language Institute—has been broadly positive for its support of archival preservation, capacity building, and community access.

Challenges and Criticisms

Critiques of the program echo debates involving non-governmental funding models like those of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations, focusing on sustainability, community control, and ethical protocols compared to guidelines from UNESCO, the World Intellectual Property Organization, and Indigenous Data Sovereignty movements. Challenges have included coordination with national archives, intellectual property disputes involving museums and universities such as the British Library and the Library of Congress, and fieldwork logistics in regions affected by conflict or environmental change like the Amazon, Siberia, Papua New Guinea, and the Sahel. Discussions among scholars at venues like the Linguistic Society of America meetings, the International Congress of Linguists, and seminars at institutions such as SOAS and the University of Cambridge continue to address best practices and future directions.

Category:Linguistics Category:Endangered languages