Louise Lamphere

Areas of Specialization: Feminist Anthropology, Urban Anthropology
Louise Lamphere is a feminist anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her research interests have included feminist anthropology, gender, de-industrialization, and urban anthropology. She has published extensively on Native American issues, such as kinship and cooperation, and on issues such as working mothers, immigration and women’s lives and remains active in her advocacy on behalf of feminist causes.

Lamphere started as an assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University and the only woman in her department when she was hired in 1968. Louise Lamphere was surprisingly denied tenure in 1974 which lead to a landmark class action suit charging Brown University of sex discrimination, noting her tenure denial but also the larger patterns of discrimination of women at the university. Lamphere won the case which served as a catalyst for a series of actions that reformed policies around sex discrimination and affirmative action at Brown University. It is notable that Brown later awarded Lamphere an honorary LHD for her courage in standing up for fairness and equity.

Her published works include Sunbelt Working Mothers: Reconciling Family and Factory, Newcomers in the Workplace: Immigrants and the Restructuring of the U.S. Economy, and Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life. Lamphere’s first major publication, Women, Culture, and Society, co-edited along with Michelle- Zimbalist Rosaldo, has sold over 60,000 copies and is still a widely cited text in feminist anthropology. In 2005, she led a team to study the impacts of managed Medicaid programs in New Mexico, which was later published in Medical Anthropology Quarterly.

Lamphere has served as President-elect (1999–99) and President (1999–2001) of the American Anthropological Association. She won the Franz Boas Award from the American Anthropological Association for Exemplary Service to Anthropology in 2013 and the Bronislaw Malinoswki Award from the Society of Applied Anthropology in 2017.

Academic Website

Featured in Top Influential Anthropologists Today

Interview with Louise Lamphere