In 2002, Arcadia created the Hans Rausing Endangered Languages Programme at SOAS. It funds fieldwork, training and archiving to record near-extinct languages.

Of the 6-7,000 languages in the world, more than half may disappear by the end of the century. The programme primarily funds the documentation of selected endangered languages to preserve systematic knowledge of their content, structure and cultural context. This is achieved through field work (supplementing any existing data) as well as video and audio recordings. The aim is to produce archival data in digital and hard-copy form (involving transcriptions, translations, correlation of material), which will be accessible all, including the language communities and future scholars.

80% of funding is allocated to documentation research projects. An international panel of linguists award funds on the basis of competitive applications from established scholars, postdoctoral researchers and graduate students. Chosen languages are highly endangered; not previously studied; and not closely related to other, well-documented languages. The programme also supports academic teaching and postdoctoral work in field linguistics at SOAS as well as the creation and maintenance of an endangered languages archive.

To date, the programme has funded over 80 documentation projects, preserving c. 100 near-extinct languages. These include Kayardild, a language spoken by only eight people in the Mornington and Bentinck islands of Australia; Watunhua and Daohua in Tibet; Apurina in the Brazilian Amazon; Betta Kurumba in southern India; Goemai in central Nigeria; Ös in Siberia; Rongga in Indonesia; Gújjólay Eegima in Senegal; and Tujia in China.

Documentation grants are subject to strict ethical conditions. Researchers must secure the full, prior agreement of the language communities to their projects and to the form in which its results will be disseminated, both in the local community and to scholars.