Digital Multimedia Archive of Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage Phase II: Seeding Multidisciplinary Workspaces

This project takes language archiving and documentation infrastructure to a new level. Building on the outcome of the digital resource Repository and Workspace for Austroasiatic Intangible Heritage (RWAAI), the project will break new ground in the interdisciplinary adaptation of language resources. It will achieve this by (1) broadening reusability through the development of new tools and principles with multidisciplinary potential, (2) continuing acquisitions of Austroasiatic collections to maximize comprehensiveness of languages, and disciplines other than linguistics, and (3) engaging in outreach to provide training and expertise by collaborating with researchers in other disciplines and regions. Moving beyond vested linguistic interest, the resulting infrastructure will provide a research workspace of relevance to a range of disciplines, such as history, the arts, biology, geography, demography, and the food sciences. The project consolidates a uniquely qualified team of language specialists and experts in modern documentary technology. The small, endangered, and underdocumented Austroasiatic speech communities in Mainland Southeast Asia and India provide an unparalleled window on the history and cultural diversity of this region. The project represents the leading global initiative to document the intangible heritage of these communities.