Livonian is a critically endangered Uralic language spoken in Latvia. Currently the number of speakers is estimated to be around 20 to 30. Regardless of its low number of speakers Livonian is relatively well documented even though still under-researched. During the recent years Livonian has been getting increasing attention within the academic community. On the one hand it can be attributed to active work of the researchers and the activists, on the other hand it was also
fascilitated by the improved socioeconomic circumstances and technological advancements, including data digitalisation and the ever-growing accessibility to research online.

Researching the Livonian language, culture, heritage as well as the historic circumstances of the Livonian community can give insights in many areas. Firstly, since Livonian as well as the recent history of the community has been relatively well documented, including the period during which the language proficiency declined and as a result the language became critically endangered. This knowledge gives a unique opportunity to „see the future“ of the languages that are in somewhat similar circumstances, that Livonian had been over the last century. Secondly, Livonian in a way is the „missing link“ in the Baltic Sea area, as it is not that well researched, especially compared to its closest contact languages. Further research of Livonian helps to improve our understanding of the development of Finnic languages as well as language contacts, their timeline and results of the contacts in the Baltic Sea area.

The online course of Livonian consists of 15 Zoom lectures, 5 of them are dedicated to the Livonian culture and heritage and 10 lectures dedicated to the Livonian language. The lectures will be provided by scholars from the University of Latvia and University of Tartu. The participants will have two lectures daily on working days on 11th through 20th of April, which will begin at 10:00 in the morning (time zone: GMT+2) and will end by ~13:15. Participants will be awarded 3 ECTS points.

The registration deadline for the course is 20th March and in order to register the participants are required to contact Mikke Mayer (marie-christin.mayer@univie.ac.at) or Jeremy Bradley (jeremy.moss.bradley@univie.ac.at) via email. The Zoom link will be sent shortly before the beginning of the course.

The preliminary schedule can be found on the course website.