I do research on the principles and practices of language documentation, language description, and language support (including revitalisation, maintenance, and policy development). I also present training seminars on these topics (see Section 4 below).
1. Research methods and history
- Nathan, David & Peter K. Austin. 2004. Reconceiving metadata: language documentation through thick and thin. Language Documentation and Description 2, 179-187. London: SOAS. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2006. Data and language documentation. In Jost Gippert, Nikolaus Himmelmann & Ulrike Mosel (eds.) Essentials of Language Documentation, 87-112. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. download
- Austin, Peter K. & Lenore A. Grenoble. 2007. Current trends in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 4, 12-25. link
- Dobrin, Lise, Peter K. Austin & David Nathan. 2007. Dying to be counted: commodification of endangered languages. In Peter K. Austin, Oliver Bond and David Nathan (eds.) Proceedings of Conference on Language Documentation and Linguistic Theory, 59-68. London: SOAS. download
- Austin, Peter K. 2008. Training for language documentation: Experiences at the School of Oriental and African Studies. In Margaret Florey & Victoria Rau (eds.) Documenting and Revitalising Austronesian Languages, 25-41. Language Documentation and Conservation Special Publication No. 1. Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. link
- Dobrin, Lise, Peter K. Austin & David Nathan. 2009. Dying to be counted: the commodification of endangered languages in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 6, 37-52. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2010. Current issues in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 7, 12-33. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2010. Applying for a language documentation research grant. Language Documentation and Description 7, 285-299. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2012. Language documentation. Oxford Bibliographies online. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Austin, Peter K. 2013. Language documentation and meta-documentation. In Mari Jones & Sarah Ogilvie (eds.) Keeping Languages Alive: Documentation, Pedagogy and Revitalization, 3-15. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. download
- Austin, Peter K. 2014. Language documentation in the 21st century. JournaLIPP 3, 57-71. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2016. Language documentation 20 years on. In Martin Pütz & Luna Filipović (eds.) Endangered Languages and Languages in Danger: Issues of ecology, policy and human rights, 147-170. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. download
- Austin, Peter K. 2017. Language documentation and legacy text materials. Asian and African Languages and Linguistics 11, 23-44. link
- Austin, Peter K. & Stefanie Pillai. 2020. Language description, documentation and revitalisation of languages in Malaysia. Journal of Modern Languages 30(1), 1-5. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2021. Corpora and archiving in language documentation, description, and revitalisation. Ethnorema 17, 53-65. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2023. Making 2,180 pages more useful: the Diyari dictionary of Rev. J. G. Reuther. In Eda Dehermi & Christopher Moseley (eds.) Endangered Languages in the 21st Century , 241-257. London: Routledge. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2025. Adding value to legacy linguistic fieldnotes: an Australian case study. Submitted to SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics. link
2. Research ethics and language ideologies
- Austin, Peter K. 2010. Communities, ethics and rights in language documentation. Language Documentation and Description 7, 34-54. link
- Peter K. 2014. And still they speak Diyari: the life history of an endangered language. Ethnorema 10, 1-17. link
- Austin, Peter K. 2014. Going, going, gone? The ideology and politics of language revitalisation in eastern Australia. In Peter K. Austin & Julia Sallabank (eds.) Endangered Languages. Beliefs and Ideologies in Language Documentation and Revitalisation. London: British Academy. download
- Austin, Peter K. 2019. Comunidades, ética y derechos en lingüística de la documentación. In Lucía Golluscio, Paola Pacor, Florencia Ciccone, Marta Krasan (eds.) Lingüística de la Documentación: textos fundacionales y proyecciones en América del Sur, 169-192. Spanish translation of Austin 2010. Buenos Aires : Eudeba & Universidad de Buenos Aires. download
3. Creating research outputs
- Austin, Peter K. & Julia Sallabank. 2018. Language documentation and language revitalisation: some methodological considerations. In Leanne Hinton, Leena Huss & Gerald Roche (eds.) Handbook of Language Revitalisation, 207-215. London: Routledge. download
- Austin, Peter K. 2020. Language documentation and revitalisation. In Justyna Olko & Julia Sallabank (eds.) Revitalizing endangered languages: a practical guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. download
- Sallabank, Julia and Peter K. Austin. 2024. Endangered Languages. In Li Wei, Zhu Hua and James Simpson (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Applied Linguistics, 2nd edition, 362-373. link
4. Research training
2025
- lecture 1, LDSS2025 Summer School, Tuscia University, Italy, Documentation, description, and corpus creation and management download
- lecture 2, LDSS2025 Summer School, Tuscia University, Italy, Challenges and opportunities in dealing with legacy materials download
- lecture, FieldLing summer school, Paris, Corpus creation, archiving and use download
2024
- lecture 1, LDSS2024 Summer School, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, Linguistic Fieldwork: Theory and Practice. download
- lecture 2, LDSS2024 Summer School, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, Language Documentation, Description and Revitalisation: How and Why? download
- lecture 3, LDSS2024 Summer School, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, Corpus Management and Processing. download
- lecture 3, LDSS2024 Summer School, Bolzano/Bozen, Italy, Outcomes in Language Documentation: Mobilisation and Language Support. download
- lecture, FieldLing summer school, Paris, Corpus creation, archiving and use download
2023
- lecture, FieldLing summer school, Paris, Corpus creation, archiving and use download
- lecture 1, LDSS2023 Summer School, Naples, Italy, Linguistic fieldwork: theory and practice. download
- lecture 2, LDSS2023 Summer School, Naples, Italy, Language documentation, language description, and language revitalization: how and why? download
- lecture 3, LDSS2023 Summer School, Naples, Italy, Ethics and rights in linguistic research. download
- lecture, SOAS, University of London, Language and culture revitalisation: ‘official’ models and support vs. local needs – experiences in South Australia. download
- lecture, ANU Linguistics Department, Australia, Going back to the field after many decades: experiences in South and Western Australia. download
2022
- lecture, SOAS, University of London. Ethics and rights in linguistic research. download
- lecture, SOAS, University of London. Overview of tools and techniques for language documentation, description and revitalisation. download
- lectures, LDSS2022, University of Tuscia, Italy.
1. Overview of tools and techniques for language documentation, description and revitalisation download
2. Language documentation, language description, and language revitalization: how and why? download
3. Language documentation, language description, and language revitalization: partners or problem neighbours? download
4. Ethics and rights in language documentation, revitalisation and archiving download