THE ISTROX PROJECT: FROM DONATION TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

ABSTRACT

The article provides an overview of the main steps in the development and the follow-up of the ISTROX pilot project developed within the Faculty of Linguistics, Philology, and Phonetics at the University of Oxford. Planned for 2018–2020, and extended to July 2021 in the context of the Covid pandemic, ISTROX aimed to prepare the ground for a larger envisaged project exploring the history of the Istro-Romanian language (vlaški and žejanski) and community. At the core of ISTROX is a previously unpublished body of sound recordings of IstroRomanian made in Istria during the 1960s by the Oxford linguist Tony Hurren and donated to the University in the 2000s by his wife, Vera Hurren. Part of the approach of ISTROX entailed initiating the online sourcing of linguistic information from the very small community of remaining speakers of ‘Istro-Romanian' worldwide. As the development of the project overlapped with the Covid pandemic, the ISTROX team had to redesign the relationship between the offline and the online elements of the project – a process which is being reoriented towards the offline in post-pandemic context. © 2022, Publishing House of the Romanian Academy. All rights reserved.