For much of her professional career, Landes held a number of contract research positions. In 1939, she became a researcher for
Gunnar Myrdal's study of African-Americans. In 1941, she became research director for the
Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. In 1941 to 1945, she was the representative for African-American and Mexican-American Affairs on President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Committee on Fair Employment Practices. Meanwhile, she began to study the
Acadians of
Louisiana. In 1948–1951, Landes was study director of the
American Jewish Commission in New York. She was a consultant on Jewish families of New York for Ruth Benedict's Research in Contemporary Cultures in 1949 to 1951. In 1950 to 1952, Landes studied problems of immigrants of Asian and African descent in the United Kingdom. In 1946 to 1947 and again in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, Landes lived in
California and, through several consultantships, became involved with the study of
Hispanic/
Latino culture. Meanwhile, she began
cross-cultural studies on minority education and the processes and effects of aging. In 1968, she began an investigation of
bilingualism and biculturalism that developed from her interest in
Quebec nationalism in Canada. The project took her to Spain and
Nevada to study the
Basques, to Switzerland to examine the four language groups there, and to
South Africa to study the interaction of
Africans, English-speakers, and
Afrikaans-speakers. She resumed interest in the Acadians of Louisiana in 1963. Until 1965, Landes's institutional affiliations consisted of fairly short-term appointments. Besides those already named, she was an instructor at
Brooklyn College in 1937 and at
Fisk University in 1937 to 1938. She was a lecturer at the William Alanson White Psychiatric Institution in New York in 1953 to 1954 and at the
New School for Social Research in New York in 1953 to 1955. She was a visiting professor at the
University of Kansas in 1957 and at the
University of Southern California in 1957 to 1965. From 1959 to 1962, she was visiting professor and director of the anthropology and education program at the
Claremont Graduate School. She was an
extension lecturer at Columbia University and at
Los Angeles State College in 1963, a visiting professor at
Tulane University during the early months of 1964, and a visiting professor at the University of Kansas in the summer of 1964. Her association with
McMaster University in
Hamilton, Ontario, began in 1965 and continued after 1977 with her appointment as
professor emerita. ==Death and legacy==