The archival funds of endangered languages of aboriginal Siberia is regularly updated with the results of expeditionary ethnolinguistic projects. At least 4 field expeditions sponsored by TGPU, national and international agencies are administered annually. At present linguistic and ethnocultural documentation is performed using the modern methodological and technological facilities and in accordance with the international methodological and technological conventions. The aim is to design and implement an infrastructure for effective storage and access to the ethnographical and linguistic data; generate, test and apply high-efficiency methods of linguistic data archival to ensure the productive environment for the research and effective training/education. The collection, processing and archiving of the new data is currently performed with the use of international best practices, such as those recommended by DoBeS, ELAR, SIL. This allows integrate the data on endangered languages of Siberia into the unified global academic discourse applying the computer technology in linguistics.

The Department plays an active role in the organization of the academic exchange programs for students, post-graduates and young faculty, both as a host and donor side. For the last 5 years more than 10 members of the center and 3 foreign citizens participated in various exchange programs.

The center is an access point to the unique library collections with more than 8,500 titles, which are used by students, aspirants and scientists as well as by anyone affiliated with TSPU, Tomsk universities and guests from other regions of Siberia, the Russian Federation and abroad.

The Degree Program in Linguistics

The Department has the officially certified graduate degree programs 10.02.02 “The Languages of the Peoples of Russian Federation: Nganasan, Selkup, Tatar, Ket, Khanty”, and 10.02.20 “Comparative-historical, typological and contrastive linguistics”. There are at least 10 graduate students pursuing their degree projects at the Department annually.

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The Department is  welcoming  anyone  interested   in  the languages and cultures of the aboriginal population of Siberia. In March 2006 the staff of the center and the faculty of the Department of Siberian Indigenous Languages designed and administered presentations on the language and culture of indigenous nations of Tomsk region (Khanty, Ket, Selkup) for the students of Tomsk Academic lyceum.

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The Department holds regular monthly graduate colloquiums and seminars, aimed at reporting on the progress of on-going projects and dissertation research. The Department's open seminars provide the floor for the guest speakers covering a wide range of issues in theoretical and applied linguistics, inviting the leading Russian and world experts, professor V.А.Plungjan (Moscow), professor А.P.Volodin (St. Petersburg), professor T.Payne (USA), professor  E.Vajda (USA).

To extend the contact network and to intensify the academic and information exchange the Department  established in the early 1960’s the bi-annual international academic conference “Dulson Readings”. The summer of 2008 will see the 25th congress.

Scientific and research center is the partner in research, scientific and educational projects with a number of national and foreign organizations:  Regional and All-Russian associations of native minorities of the North, Siberia and the Far East; Rice University (Houston, USA), Sheffield University (Great Britain), Edinburgh University (Great Britain), London University-college (Great Britain), Yale University (USA), Swarthmore College (USA), West-Washington University (USA), Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (Germany), Helsinki University (Finland), University of Zurich (Switzerland), University of Hamburg (Germany) etc.