Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology

09/04/2026

Haylee Backs (Boston University) is looking at Innu objects from Labrador made from animal fur that were collected between 1882-1884. She is interested in fur objects made for non-subsistence reasons to expand the view of fur use beyond the commodification promoted by the North American Fur Trade in order to better understand the relationships between indigenous communities and fur-bearing animals.

09/04/2026

Over the course of the first week of SIMA, founder of SIMA and emeritus ethnologist Candace Greene taught a series of lessons that drew on her decades of work with belongings in museums and the communities from which they originated. Candace got students to closely look at various types of belongings, how to think about taking notes, the importance of drawing and why we need to think carefuly about categories that they are used to engage in their work.

09/03/2026

Alexis Forer (University College London) is looking at Shuar featherwork from the Ecuadorian Amazon. She investigates featherwork as a lens through which bird-human relations are made visible. The Smithsonian collections provide a historical grounding from which to track material changes in Shuar featherwork from the 1890s to the 1990s.

09/03/2026

As part of their first day at the Museum Support Center (MSC), participants got a tour of the facility where the Anthropology Department and much of NMNH steward the belongings and beings that form the collections.

09/01/2026

After an introduction by SIMA Director Joshua Bell, SIMA participants had a panel discussion with several members of the Human Dignity Program: Tribal Liaison for the Repatriation Program and SIMA alumni Marissa Shaver, Community Liaisons for International Repatriation and Domestic Returns (IRDR) Christina Benton and Olivier Brunet and Human Dignity Provenience Researcher Lauren Seig. They spoke about the work they do and their paths into working at NMNH.

The day concluded with got tours of three recent exhibits that frame the possibilities and most recent articulations of anthropology at NMNH - Cellphone: Unseen Connections (opened 2023), Bison: Standing Strong (opened 2026), From These Lands (opened 2026). Tours were led by Bell, emeritus SIMA founder Candace Greene and Curator of Archaeology Torry Rick (NMNH Anthropology).

09/01/2026

It has been a busy summer but we wanted to celebrate the most recent session of SIMA with some - delayed - posts....

06/25/2026

SIMA collections interns Sylvia Scoggin (U New Mexico), Lily Burk (Johns Hopkins U), Esther Saucedo De Leon George Washington U) and Maya Cazares (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) are learning the many procedures and protocols of collections care and handling in the National Museum of Natural History’s Anthropology collections. They will train and work with SI staff in support of the 2026 SIMA program while also participating in the seminars.

02/19/2026

We are excited to announce our visiting faculty for 2026 SIMA session (June 22 - July 17th):

Week 1 - Candace S. Greene (National Museum of Natural History)
Week 2 - Kamalu du Preez (Bishop Museum)
Week 3 - Sowparnika Balaswaminathan (Concordia University)
Week 4 - Kate Hennessy (Simon Fraser University)

This faculty will be in-residence during the program and work alongside Smithsonian staff who also will be teaching.

Applications are due - March 1, 2026

02/16/2026

Join SIMA Director Joshua A. Bell and SIMA alumni, Curatorial Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Matthew R. Webb and ACLS Buddhism Public Scholar at the American Museum of Natural History Tierney Brown for a virtual Webinar/FAQ about The Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA), Monday February 23rd (11:00 – 12pm EST). We will be going over the program’s details and answering questions. The webinar will be open to the public but registration is required.

Register in advance for this webinar:
https://lnkd.in/eMriKYEa

SIMA is a paid graduate student summer training program in museum research methods offered through the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History with major funding from the Cultural Anthropology Program of the National Science Foundation. During four weeks of intensive training in seminars and hands-on workshops in the research collections, students are introduced to the scope of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History Anthropology collections. Students become acquainted with strategies for navigating museum systems, learn to select methods to examine and analyze archival and museum collections, and consider a range of theoretical issues that collections-based research may address. Throughout SIMA, students are also taught about the ethics of engaging with communities’ belongings in museums, and the practicalities of doing collaborative research. In consultation with faculty, each student carries out preliminary collections research on a topic of their own choice and develops a prospectus for research to be implemented upon return to their home university. SIMA is open to US citizens studying abroad or anyone studying at a US based institution.

SIMA will run from June 22 to 17 July, 2026, and is based in Washington D.C., at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. More information can be found here:

https://naturalhistory.si.edu/research/anthropology/programs/summer-institute-museum-anthropology

The Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology (SIMA) at the Smithsonian seeks to promote broader and more effective use of museum collections – artifacts, audio recordings, art works, still and moving images - in anthropological research by providing graduate students with an immersive, four-week tr...