Sharpe internships strengthen community partnerships

The 2025 cohort of Sharpe Action Research interns forged new partnerships to impact communities through research.

Sharpe Action Research Internships support students working with community organizations to conduct research that tackles issues that matter. The program is the latest to emerge from Sharpe, William & Mary’s living-learning community for community-based research and engagement.

According to Dr. Monica Griffin ‘88, Director of Engaged Scholarship and the Sharpe Community Scholars Program, “Action Research Internships give our scholars the experience of practicing inquiry in action, with and within communities – whether those communities are local to Williamsburg or global locations connected to their lives and interests. The true value of the experience is the opportunity to deepen their learning and gain skills from broadened sources of knowledge, in an increasingly complex world of lived experiences.”

Sophomore Sophia Curlee’s internship at Jolly’s Mill Pond fed her research interests at the intersections of culinary history, sustainable agriculture, and local education.

Jolly’s Mill Pond is a local farm with a rich past that ties into Williamsburg Black and Indigenous histories, committed to sustainable practices such as growing organically and using rain catchment and solar power whenever possible. They currently grow numerous crops, create baked goods for the Williamsburg Farmers Market, and host public classes on historical culinary practices.

Through carefully researched culinary and cultivation techniques, Jolly’s Mill Pond is working toward the goal of developing an agricultural practice that is ecologically and financially sustainable.

For her Action Research Internship, Curlee is cooking up (sometimes literally) new research on recipes for the farm’s Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) initiative. She is currently exploring the foodways and recipes surrounding heritage peppers, such as the Scotch bonnet pepper, to create educational information for the CSA’s new members.

For Sophia, who first partnered with Jolly’s Mill Pond during her fall semester as a Sharpe Scholar, the organization’s “values of curiosity, sustainability, and connecting with local history line up well with what I care about and the fields I would love to go into.”

International Relations major Anushka Pujara’s ’28 Action Research Internship took her back home to Kolkata, India, where she worked with two interconnected projects.

With the Girl Child Enablement Project, Pujara investigated disparities in local girls’ access to health education and resources, seeking to understand how these disparities impact health and education outcomes across West Bengal.

With the Last Person Foundation, she conducted observational education research with local primary schools to develop a holistic model of youth development that will be replicated in a youth academy in Bishnupur.

Pujara’s interest in proposing this dual-project internship is personal. She explained that “having grown up seeing the huge gaps in resources, wealth, and societal norms between urban and rural West Bengal, especially when it comes to women's rights and education, I was instantly drawn to the idea of involving Bishnupur locals on a grassroots level.”

The focus on grassroots involvement of community members outside academia is central to Sharpe’s mission of encouraging the appreciation of knowledge from community and the collaboration of different perspectives across community through research and engagement.

“The most meaningful aspect of community-based research in West Bengal,” Pujara continued, “is that I will be able to give back to my community in ways that I had only dreamt of doing but had no idea how to do when I was younger.”

Alongside new partnerships, Sharpe continues to maintain longstanding relationships with other community organizations conducting impactful research.

This summer, biology major Me’Sharlia Fountain ‘28 pursued an Action Research Internship with the Bray School Lab mapping the literacy education of enslaved African Americans who were involved with the school. For Fountain this internship opened interdisciplinary doors that expanded and deepened her pre-med aspirations.

“This internship has expanded how I think about care, both in history and in my future career in medicine,” she explained. “Learning how literacy was a tool for both survival and empowerment deepens my understanding of systemic inequality and resilience. It’s taught me to approach healing not just biologically, but holistically considering social, historical, and cultural contexts too.”

The 2025-26 academic year welcomes nearly 70 new Sharpe Scholars to campus, where they will explore the countless possibilities of community-based research and engagement across Williamsburg.

This summer’s community partners, new and returning, will be instrumental to mentoring scholars’ understanding of communities around their new home at W&M.