RISE UP: Revitalising Languages and Safeguarding Cultural Diversity

RISE UP aims to empower minoritised language communities by building connections between language activists, speakers and new speakers in different communities, identifying good practices and developing resources. The project aims to achieve this by:

• Analyzing - past and present language policies, language ideologies, and  sociolinguistic, legal, and economic reasons for language endangerment.
• Defining - a European Language Promotion Ecosystem which aims to ensure linguistic diversity by giving voice and support to smaller linguistic  communities to empower them.
• Facilitating and Enhancing - exchange of resources and tools among endangered language communities.
• Developing - a RISE UP digital toolset to support the revitalization of endangered languages.
• Linking - educational/cultural/creative sectors with regional development.

The RISE UP team at SOAS is led by Prof Julia Sallabank, who is an expert in endangered languages, and supported by Dr Kingsley Ugwuanyi (a postdoctoral researcher on the project) and Miho Zlazli (a doctoral researcher who is a research assistant on the project).

Email address: riseup@soas.ac.uk

Five language groups have been selected on which RISE UP will especially focus:

• Aranés (Spain, France)
• Aromanian/Vlach (Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia (FYROM), Serbia, Romania)
• Burgenland Croatian (Austria)
• Cornish (UK)
• Seto (Estonia, Russia)

Over the course of 3-years, the RISE UP consortium, consisting of eight organisations from six European countries (Austria, Estonia, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, United Kingdom), will collaborate to achieve the project's objectives.

The consortium brings together expertise from various disciplines, including linguistics, cultural research, education, art, and game development, and will adopt a multi-disciplinary approach to work towards their shared goals. The consortium consists of:

• Minds & Sparks (Austria)
• University of Tartu (Estonia)
• University of Vienna (Austria)
• Espronceda Institute of Arts and Culture (Spain)
• Youth of European Nationalities (Germany)
• Nurogames GMBH (Germany)
• SOAS University of London (UK)
• University of Roehampton (UK)

RISE UP collects and analyses context information and policies for endangered languages  in Europe generally and for the selected language groups specifically. It aims to create a set of tools to improve the possibilities to learn those languages.

It also tries to interconnect relevant actors and especially aims to involve young people. Thus, RISE UP aims to provide support and empowerment to endangered language communities in Europe.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Research Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.