The Limburgish Academy Foundation was established in the beginning of 2007. The aim of the Foundation is to make the Limburgish language accessible to both linguistic researchers and the wider general public, and consequently to contribute to the preservation of Limburgish. Dr Yuri Michielsen-Tallman, LLM (Harvard), PhD (Maastricht University) and Mr Stuart LaRosa, MA (UC Santa Cruz) are the founders of the Foundation, which is based in Mestreech (Maastricht), the capital of Limburg, in the Netherlands.

Some of the partnerships that are currently part of the Foundation were formed in 2004 and others began even earlier. The main impetus for the Foundation was provided in 2006, when Dr Yuri Michielsen and Mr Stuart LaRosa were searching for funding to finance the Limburgish dictionary project they were working on; establishing the Foundation provided a formal structure for their collaboration.

It quickly became clear that more help was needed in order to continue the project. For specific queries, contact was established with linguists with further expertise in the Limburgish language or some of its particular features. In addition, a search was initiated for volunteers who were willing to work their way through works published in Limburgish.

For legal reasons, these experts and volunteers are not members of the Foundation. Nevertheless, they contribute in a significant way to the various activities organised by the Foundation. The experts form part of a separate committee, the Academic Advisory Board, through which they support the Foundation and show their willingness to be contacted to resolve any linguistic queries. In addition, our pool of enthusiastic volunteers ensures that works written in Limburgish are attentively read, thereby executing an important part of the dictionary project.