Academic engagement strategy – expressions of interest

The archive of materials in Aboriginal languages at livingarchive.cdu.edu.au is living and growing, with more than 1000 items in over 25 languages from around the Northern Territory.  Hundreds more items are still being discovered and processed, to be uploaded when permission from the creators is obtained.

One of the four strands of Stage II of this ARC-funded project is designated ‘Academic Engagement’.  The goal is to establish a network of academics involved in teaching and researching Australian languages, to facilitate research which involves collaborations with language owners through the archive in undergraduate teaching and postgraduate research.

Types of academic engagement may include

  • Using texts (and related resources) from the Living Archive in teaching and research work.
  • Enriching existing texts with translations, enhanced metadata, audio resources, commentaries etc to be uploaded as ‘related items’
  • Engagement with text and language owners for further research (including the upskilling and professionalisation of language authorities)
  • Documenting uses of the resources in various contexts
  • Building language-specific and text-specific lexicons, mini-grammars, etc
  • Deriving corpora for analysis
  • Uploading new texts and resources
  • Proposing alterations and corrections for existing resources

We are looking for expressions of interest for a linguist / researcher to facilitate academic engagement. Possible tasks may include the following:

  • Bring together a network of academic linguists (including possibly internationally) interested in using the Living Archive for teaching or research
  • Audit degrees and courses which could possibly engage with (or contribute) texts and collaborate with their owners
  • Develop an audit of texts in (NT) Aboriginal languages in PhD theses and other research projects which could be included in the archive, and people to contact for permission.
  • Locate texts in other archives which could be shared with the Living Archive and vice versa.
  • Work with the Living Archive team to strategise and implement a permissions process including ways of identifying the creators and owners of materials who might be contacted for permission

This work may be done as a consultancy or part of a research project, or other arrangements can be negotiated.

Please contact us for more information or to express your interest in being involved.