Louise Lamphere, PhD

The Lamphere Public Policy RA position is funded through an endowment established by Dr. Louise Lamphere. This fellowship supports the Ortiz Center.

Louise Lamphere is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Emerita at the University of New Mexico and Past President of the American Anthropological Association. During 2001-2002 she was a Visiting Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York City and was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at Princeton University in Fall 2007. Her first major publication was Woman, Culture and Society co-edited with Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo (1974). And her book on Navajo family life, To Run After Them: The Social and Cultural Bases of Cooperation in a Navajo Community, was published in 1977. She has studied issues of women and work for 25 years, beginning with her study of women workers in Rhode Island industry, From Working Daughters to Working Mothers (1977). She also coauthored a study of working women in Albuquerque entitled. Sunbelt Working Mothers: Reconciling Family and Factory (1993) with Patricia Zavella, Felipe Gonzales, and Peter Evans. Finally, She co-edited with Helena Ragone’ and Patricia Zavella a collection of articles entitled Situated Lives: Gender and Culture in Everyday Life (1997).

Professor Lamphere’s interest in migration is reflected in two collections from Structuring Diversity: Ethnographic Perspectives on the New Immigration (1994) and Newcomers in the Workplace (1994). Her most recent book is a biography of three Navajo women entitled: Weaving Women’s Lives: Three Generations in a Navajo Family, (2007).

For the past 10 years Professor has been conducting research on Medicaid Managed Care Reform (1998-2000) and Behavioral Health Reform (2005-2010) in New Mexico. She is particularly interested in the impact of privatization on Native American and Hispano health-care consumers and on women who work in the front-lines of health care delivery (medical assistants, nurses, case managers). She has edited a special issue of Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Providers and Patients Respond to Medicaid Managed Care: Ethnographic Insights from New Mexico, March 2005, as well as co-authored several articles. She is collaborating with Cathleen Willging on a book entitled, Behavioral Health Care Reform: A Cautionary Tale from New Mexico.