• 2025: Searching for “universal” data: Preliminary search to locate data sources related to Gestuno

Jennette Phillips (Gallaudet University) and Victoria Nyst (Leiden University)

This project aims to inventory and collect archival sources of the Gestuno project, a joint initiative of European associations of the Deaf in the 1970s, codifying an early form of International Sign, a contact sign language used at international events. While no “universal” form of sign language exists, many deaf individuals utilize several tools to make themselves understood when communicating across languages. The creation of International Sign Language was an addition of one such tool. International Sign was proposed in 1924, but it was not until 1975 that the World Federation of the Deaf compiled the book Gestuno: International Sign Language of the Deaf Langage Gestuel International Des Sourds (Gestuno). This effort to develop an international sign was a unique historic event in deaf history as an international collaborative effort by the deaf community for the deaf community.

The Interlinguistics Support Fund would provide the opportunity to locate data and determine the feasibility and scope of future grant applications. After completion of the project, I will produce an annotated overview of the located data sources and a research proposal for the larger PhD project on the history of Gestuno and International Sign.

• 2025: “Piecemealing” peace: Linguistic justice and peacebuilding in Northern Ireland

Micheál Hearty (Transitional Justice Institute, Ulster University) and Cecilia Gialdini (Trinity College Dublin)

The project examines the relationship between linguistic justice and peacebuilding, addressing the underexplored role of language rights in the post-conflict reconstruction of society. To do so, we focus on the case of Northern Ireland (NI), which adopted a “piecemeal” approach to peacebuilding. In a nutshell, a piecemeal approach to peacebuilding addresses issues in isolation rather than holistically. In practice, this allowed political actors to tackle some issues immediately while postponing others with the promise of addressing them later. This “piecemealing” of the peace process avoided stagnation and reduced the likelihood of a return to political violence.

However, as the years passed, the limitations of this approach became evident. It has enabled the manifestation of a negative peace in the region due to continuous delays in adequately addressing highly contentious – yet critical – issues. One such delayed issue, sacrificed to sustain momentum in the peace process, was language. The project is driven by the following questions: What is the impact of a pieacemeal peacebuilding process on language rights in NI? What is the current level of linguistic justice in NI with respect to Irish and Ulster Scots?

• 2024: Esperanto and Ideas of Language Construction in India c.1878-1947: Edmond Privat, India and Esperanto

Bipasha Bhattacharyya (University of Cambridge)

The Swiss professor, journalist and activist Edmond Privat’s associations to Esperanto date back to its earliest mass organisational phase. Together with fellow pacifist Hector Hodler, Privat inaugurated a journal titled Juna Esperantisto (The Young Esperantist) as early as 1903. Privat’s interest in and collaboration with Gandhi, his position as an Esperantist and his interest in what he called “The Inner Light” form subsets to his commitments as a twentieth century pacifist and anti-colonial activist.

These commitments were expressed in arenas within and beyond India. Privat’s representational role for Iran within the League of Nations, and his campaigning with respect to the Polish national movement, have been written about. Privat’s role as an activist for the cause of Indian anti-colonialism, however, is a theme whose virtual neglect at the hands of Anglophone academia justifies the title of the sole book in English on the subject, P.C Roy Chaudhury’s Edmond Privat: A Forgotten Friend of India. This project is made for the purpose of conducting a week of archival work on Edmond Privat’s connections to the theosophical movement, the Esperanto movement and the Indian anticolonial movement.

• 2024: A multidimensional linguistic justice index: Measuring language policies through the capability approach

Cecilia Gialdini (Trinity College Dublin)

I am turning my PhD dissertation into a book. The manuscript, titled A Multidimensional Linguistic Justice Index: Measuring Language Policies through the Capability Approach, is under contract with John Benjamins Publishing for the book series Studies in World Language Problems. The book explores indicators to evaluate language policies inspired by the capability approaches, and as such it contributes to one of the priorities of the Foundation, e.g. evaluation of linguistic justice.

The initial peer reviews have been positive; however, the reviewers recommended that the manuscript undergo professional proofreading before it can advance to the next stage of publication. As my current post is funded through a project-specific grant, I do not have access to institutional resources that would allow me to cover the cost of this service. I am therefore requesting support from the Foundation to cover the cost of professional proofreading.

• 2024: Sociolinguistic variation in Esperanto

James Hawkey (University of Bristol)

This project explores sociolinguistic variation in Esperanto, i.e. the links between specific forms of speech and social structure. I will interview Esperantists in the United Kingdom and give them linguistic tasks in order to learn about pronunciation and the use of grammatical forms in Esperanto. I will do this to further knowledge of both sociolinguistics and the Esperanto community. Recently, we have been learning increasingly more about how speakers of small languages vary their speech according to social context, and how this influences the development of such languages. So far, researchers on variation have not considered Esperanto to be a suitable object of study, and most sociolinguistic work on Esperanto adopts anthropological or language-policy approaches. For this reason, I want to add another sociolinguistic dimension to the study of Esperanto.

In order to have enough material, I will need to interview at least 15 people and carry out the linguistic tasks with them. Using the data collected, I will write up studies. I intend to publish an article in a leading sociolinguistics journal, e.g. Journal of Sociolinguistics or Language and Society.

• 2022: Sharing knowledge in Esperanto: From expert to participatory cultures, 1900/2000

Guilherme Fians (University of St Andrews)

My current project examines how the use of certain languages and media help shape the ways in which political and scientific knowledge is produced during two critical moments in globalization’s history: the early twentieth century and the early twenty-first century. Through archival research and digital ethnography, this interdisciplinary (history/social anthropology) project takes cross-border communication in Esperanto as its entry point to ask: what role have hegemonic languages, constructed languages such as Esperanto, and particular media played in these scenarios of international knowledge production and circulation?

The Interlinguistics Support Fund would enable me to visit the archives of the Esperanto League for North America – held by the University of Massachusetts Amherst – which would enhance the historical and transnational components of my project. I will pay particular attention to how the links between Esperanto and left-wing activism in the US helped shape the circulation of information between Europe and the US in the Cold War period. Drawing on this research, I intend to produce an article for the journal History and Anthropology on Esperanto-mediated political exchanges revolving around themes such as post-colonialism and US imperialism in the 1960s-1970s.

• 2022: “Into the world came a new feeling… but does a strong call travel across the world?” The 107th Universal Congress of Esperanto

Rogener Pavinski (independent filmmaker)

Since 1905, with the holding of the first International Congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer, the Esperanto community has gathered on a large scale. The Universal Congress of Esperanto is a unique cultural festival and movement-wide forum in which the practical use of Esperanto is most prominently displayed in public. The congresses make an important contribution to Esperanto culture, but they could open new pathways for the language and its community.

For twenty years, I have been striving towards the professionalisation and greater recognition of original Esperanto culture, I proposed to UEA in 2018 and 2023 the production of post-congress documentary films showing what the atmosphere of Esperanto congresses is like. The films present a mosaic of various aspects, from ceremonies and lectures to entertainment and artistic programmes, based on interviews with congress participants and organisers, intercut with a panorama of the host city. As the Universal Congresses of Esperanto are a unique international event, they are a research object in their own right. Moreover, the presence of a professional filmmaker during the Congress could be useful for recording video interviews for other ESF research projects. I am requesting this support to professionally record the 107th Universal Congress of Esperanto in Montreal.

• 2022: Resistance to war through an international language

Javier Alcalde (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya)

A study of the use of Esperanto by the War Resisters’ International. This is an international pacifist organisation created after the First World War with the Esperanto name Paco (“Peace”).

The study forms part of a larger project on Esperanto and pacifism, which may eventually become a book. Another part of this project will shortly be published as part of the edited volume Language as Hope: L. L. Zamenhof and the Dream of a Cosmopolitan Wor(l)d, coordinated by Viola Beckmann and Liliana Ruth Feierstein. A first version of the research on the War Resisters’ International was presented last year at the Council for European Studies 27th International Conference of Europeanists. It became clear at that point that further analysis of historical documents is necessary. The project will result in an academic article and two presentations at specialist conferences on pacifism, political science and Esperanto studies.

• 2021: Linguistic imperialism and colonial resistance: Proletarian Esperantists in the peripheries of the Japanese Empire

Yauheniya Hudziyeva (Waseda University Tokio)

My project aims to investigate the importance of the Esperanto movement in the history of Japanese colonialism, focusing on the life and work of Japanese Esperantist Yamaguchi Koshizu (1900-1923). Yamaguchi was an active member of an Esperantist community in Taiwan. Even though her life was cut short at 22 years old, she was an important and unique figure that connected the Taiwanese Esperantists to the Japanese socialist movement.

I am currently working on transcribing and translating works of Yamaguchi Koshizu into English from Esperanto and Japanese. I am scheduled to present a paper about Yamaguchi Koshizu and sennaciismo in the Japanese empire at the Association of Asian Studies conference in March 2022. My presentation will be part of an international panel on anarchist and proletarian Esperanto movements in Asia. I will be able to provide a conference report on the panel for ESF blog or other event, as well as a copy of my presentation paper. I also intend to publish the paper within the year 2022.

• 2021: Public database of Zamenhof Esperanto Objects (ZEOs)

Michal Matúšov (Wikimedia Eo), Robin van der Vliet (Wikimedia Eo) and Robert Kamiński (Universala Esperanto-Asocio)

The project aims to transform the way data on ZEOs are managed. At present, they are maintained by a single person on their computer in a text file. This has several disadvantages (it is not accessible to the public, it is not machine-readable, using the data in other projects always requires processing, data on no-longer-existing ZEOs are not stored, backup is more challenging, etc.). We propose creating and launching a new online system that would be readable for everyone (both humans and computers) and editable by trusted administrators.

To support the current maintainer (Robert Kamiński), we will create guidance materials on how to edit data using the system. ZEOs will be properly visualised on the website, planned as an interactive map. The system is intended to use open-source software with good technical support in order to ensure its sustainability after the funding period of this project.