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The annual Louise Lamphere Internship Program offers two interns the chance to spend six weeks in Washington, DC, splitting their time between the American Anthropological Association (AAA) and either the Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC) or the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH). For the summer of 2025, the two interns were Jericho Walter (AAA and NHHC) and Penny Joseph (AAA and CFCH). In this piece, Jericho and Penny recount our invaluable time as Louise Lamphere interns, reflecting on what we have learned from our experiences at the AAA and our respective field sites.
Both (AAA)
On a Monday in early June, the two of us arrived outside the 14-story office building in Arlington, VA, which houses the AAA office. The building’s cold, formal lobby—combined with typical first-day jitters—proved intimidating, but only until we’d made it to the AAA’s suite on the second floor, where the spell was immediately broken. Our supervisor welcomed us into one of the coziest offices we’d ever seen, with upholstered chairs around low tables, an L-shaped couch with a fuzzy blanket hanging on the back, and potted plants in the corners and on the shelves. The open-concept office was, we soon found, well-suited to its culture; in our first two days alone, open seating, a shared staff lunch, and an all-staff meeting allowed us to meet just about everyone else who worked there. Over the rest of the summer, we became increasingly comfortable in the office, with Jericho often working from two or three different spots in a single day, and Penny coming in on Mondays, the AAA’s work-from-home day, to enjoy the quiet space.
At the AAA, the two of us collaborated on a number of projects. On one occasion, we gained insight into the work that goes into planning the Annual Meeting by thematically organizing abstracts of “flash presentations” into panels. This was a good introductory activity, as we got to see how the other’s train of thought works. Similarly, we saw how presenters interpreted this year’s theme of “Ghosts,” applying this abstract idea to their own work. While some of the groupings were obvious, others required us to think more deeply about what threads tied the different presentations together.
On another occasion, we met with the AAA’s Virtual High School Interns to give them feedback on their own summer projects – infographics based on anthropological journal articles. We got to learn about their ideas and interests, and they asked us questions about studying anthropology in college. Neither of us knew that we wanted to be anthropologists at their age, so it was so rewarding to be able to contribute to a program that supports aspiring anthropologists as early as high school.
Apart from these smaller tasks, we had two main projects for the summer.
Our first main project was to review old rosters of AAA committees and retroactively add our current members’ past committee placements to our membership database. Through this project, we learned about institutional record-keeping, as well as how an organization like the AAA keeps up its connections with its long-term members.
Our second main project was to design a digital “landing page” for the AAA that addresses the state of anthropology as a discipline. The hope is that this webpage can serve as a resource for current and future anthropologists, as well as anthropology students interested in assessing their educational and professional opportunities. While working on this page was at times depressing or stressful, especially when collecting data on grant and program cuts, it was also useful for us—and, we hope, for other recent graduates—to be able to see all these facts laid out in a straightforward manner. Through our time spent developing the landing page, we got to discuss how to approach this seemingly negative outlook both as aspiring anthropologists and as new professionals. It was refreshing to have these conversations and to write about the ways that our discipline is working to overcome these challenges.
Jericho (NHHC)
I spent my time with the Underwater Archaeology Branch (UAB) of the NHHC. After I applied for this internship, at the end of my undergraduate career, I made the decision to pursue linguistics. So, when it came time to go to DC, I was a little worried because my interests in Mesoamerican archaeology and linguistics are seemingly unrelated to the content I was engaging with here, and I was afraid that I wouldn’t be a good fit.
I quickly saw that this position helped me improve and broaden myself as an anthropologist, regardless of my interests. The experiences I had improved my research skills, time management, and networking. Additionally, I found that my linguistic background in textual analysis was helpful when working with naval reports and publications.
My first project was creating a database of aircraft models employed by the Navy during WWII and documenting where on those craft the Navy identification number is written. This project gave me more insight into how decisions are made when working with underwater cultural resources and the variables that affect how a site is surveyed or excavated. It was with this project that I really learned a lot about how naval culture is built and the relation of the military to the American public, particularly during WWII. Although my research was quantitative, I made a lot of observations on the different ways that language was utilized in political, private, and professional communications. It was fascinating to see how the crafts were anthropomorphized in manuals made for pilots, versus the more sterile language of contemporary reports, versus the later perspectives of archaeologists.
I also wrote pages for Sites and Projects, describing the 1776 ships Congress, Royal Savage, and Spitfire. These pages discuss the background of the ship and the wreck itself, with a focus on conservation efforts. If you read the past intern’s blogs, you will notice that the UAB interns have worked on the ships from this flotilla in the past, as this research has been ongoing. I was excited for this project, as these ships all wrecked in Lake Champlain, and I have previously worked on related materials in my home state of Vermont. I was able to use a lot of my existing knowledge while also learning new information from the naval-bureaucratic side. It was also super interesting to read about how something I consider part of my local culture is interpreted by a wider audience. That was a new experience for me, and fulfilling in a special way because of the personal connection. It was funny to read old reports of Vermonter’s possessiveness of Spitfire back in the 1930s, since those feelings are still there today.
This internship helped me to use my anthropological skills and mindset in ways that were new to me. Before this, I had not worked in an office setting or a military one, and in both environments, I was able to practice professionalism and cultural relativism. This internship and living in DC pushed me out of my comfort zone in a satisfying way and I quickly learned how to balance my energy.
I also was able to brainstorm with other interns and employees at UAB about ways that I can be involved with underwater cultural resource management in my future, as that’s an important secondary interest of mine, even though I don’t currently plan on becoming an underwater archaeologist. Overall, I was happy with the broader anthropological skills I developed and was surprised by how I could engage with my more unrelated interests.
Penny (CFCH)
Coming into this program, I was most apprehensive about the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (CFCH) portion of my internship. I was joining the Festival’s Evaluation team, composed of two other interns and our supervisor, to help design, analyze, and summarize a survey of Festival visitors. But I was a late arrival to the team. By the time my internship began, the three of them had been preparing for the Festival for a week and a half, and they’d already divvied up all major duties for the summer. Plus, the other interns were there full-time, while I was there only three days a week! I felt like I was barging in on an established team, and I worried that I would end up assisting the other interns while they did the “real” work.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what it was that I could contribute to the report, and I realized that my Anthropology major had provided me with a unique set of skills to offer. As an undergraduate student, I had conducted an ethnographic senior thesis project, which included semi-structured interviews. Having heard that previous AAA interns at CFCH had also performed interviews, I talked to my supervisor about adding an interview component to our Evaluation report. She agreed, and I set to work on preparing the materials for the interviews, which aimed to understand why it is that returning visitors come back to the Festival year after year.
The Folklife Festival took place in early July on the National Mall. This year’s theme was “Youth and the Future of Culture,” with different exhibits—ranging from musical performances to crafts demonstrations to language workshops and beyond—highlighting the role that young people play in receiving, reshaping, and creating culture. At different points, I helped with setup, takedown, and cleaning, but the bulk of my time—and my favorite part of the event—was spent administering surveys on an iPad and interviewing Festival visitors.
During the six days of the Folklife Festival, I met so many fascinating people, including a professional folklorist, an environmentalist with whom I shared a mutual acquaintance, and two former Festival participants. In these conversations, I learned about the relationships that our returning visitors have with the Festival and the memories that have most stuck with them over the years. They shared with me their anxieties about the future of the Smithsonian, their fears that there would not continue to be funding for the Festival—and their faith in our ability to carry on. And time and time again, I heard about their interest in tradition, in the passing-on of culture.
In my favorite conversation of the entire Festival, I spoke to a 78-year-old woman who told me about how the Festival had made her reflect on her relationship with her grandmother. When she was a child, her grandmother had shared valuable “lessons” with her, but she had been too young to truly “hear” them. As an adult, although her grandmother has died, she has found that these lessons keep coming back to her, now that she is old enough to appreciate them. We discussed the theme of this year’s Festival, “Youth and the Future of Culture,” and how many of the exhibits had to do with efforts to ensure that various ideas or practices were not lost with time, but passed on to younger generations. As she saw it, the Festival offered its young visitors and participants something like what her grandmother had given her—the chance to begin to carry knowledge whose true value might only become apparent to them once they were older. These pieces of wisdom and culture, she told me, “will depart, but they will come back.” Her words made me reflect on the cyclical nature of wisdom, my own relationships with older family members, and the importance of the Folklife Festival itself. I feel so fortunate to have met her.
Despite my initial apprehension, my time at the Folklife Festival ended up being the highlight of my summer in DC. Apart from adding to my familiarity with various research methods, both quantitative and qualitative, the experience helped me to consider new professional paths that I might take with my Anthropology degree. And on a personal level, my time at CFCH has changed the way I think about community, cultural institutions, and the myriad sites in which tradition is transmitted from one generation to another.
Conclusion
In a particular highlight of the summer, we were fortunate enough to be able to speak with the donors behind our internship, Drs. Louise Lamphere and Mary Moran. By this point, we’d already begun work on the State of the Discipline landing page, and the data we were turning up was grim, pointing to declines in educational, professional, and research opportunities for anthropologists and students alike, along with cultural backlash against the social sciences and academia more broadly. Reflecting on this, we asked Drs. Lamphere and Moran what they made of this present moment, of the sense that so many people seem to have that the discipline of anthropology is under attack.
But Dr. Lamphere’s answer was not so bleak. Instead of harping on the downfall of the field, she reflected on how the role of the anthropologist is changing. The anthropologist, she told us, can no longer stay confined to the university. She spoke to the importance of applied anthropology, suggesting that anthropologists need to start letting their community partners determine their topics for them—asking what they need—rather than coming to them with their lines of inquiry already decided. Her words made us reflect on how the unsettling of anthropology as a discipline is also an opportunity—for the field, and for individual anthropologists—to reconsider our relationship to those we study and those we serve. Getting to speak to such established and experienced anthropologists was an honor and a privilege for us as we begin our own careers, particularly in a moment that can feel so unstable.
The first day the two of us met, we were surprised to learn that we will both be spending the next year abroad through the very same program! As participants in the North American Language and Culture Assistants Program (NALCAP), we will be working as English teaching assistants in different regions in Spain. After the program ends in the spring of 2026, Penny remains undecided on their immediate next steps but hopes to one day pursue a graduate degree in anthropology. Through their experiences at CFCH, they have come to see that the tools and methods of anthropology can be applied in all sorts of contexts beyond academia. Jericho is hoping to earn a master’s degree in linguistics, with the goal of working interdisciplinarily in Mesoamerica. He learned how to use anthropological theory in different work environments and the larger value of being able to see the world with an anthropological perspective.