This year the British Museum’s Endangered Material Knowledge Programme (EMKP) and SOAS’ Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP) are delighted to announce a joint call for grant applications. Funded by Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin – EMKP and ELDP jointly offer grants for collaborative projects that combine language and material knowledge documentation.

This call is in response to the recognition that cultural knowledge of the made world is encoded in the language of its makers, and that both are critically threatened by rapidly changing social, political and economic factors across the globe. This call offers an exciting opportunity for trans-disciplinary work that integrates the documentation of endangered material knowledge and its expression in the endangered language of its speakers, exploring how people understand, learn and make their worlds in their own terms. The funded projects provide the opportunity to give the makers a voice, and to preserve their knowledge in the language in which it was developed.

Applicants will need to submit an application to both EMKP and ELDP to be considered for this joint grant.

The application system for grants opens 8 November 2019 and closes 15 January 2020. Find the application guidelines here.