Featured Speakers
Global Fusion 2025 | OCT 16–19, 2025 | Carbondale, IL
The Critical Path In Disorienting Times: Explorations, Practices, and Solidarities
Academic immigrants in pursuit of a home and solidarity
Dafna Lemish
Distinguished Professor and Interim Dean, School of Communication and Information, Rutgers University
In this plenary presentation, Dafna Lemish will discuss her new book Always an Academic Immigrant: A Collective Memoire (Rutgers University Press, 2025). This collective memoir gives voice to eighty-one academics who immigrated from thirty-seven countries for careers in institutions of higher education in eleven different countries. Lemish will discuss the in-depth interviews as well as observations from her own experiences as an immigrant scholar and reflect on the highs and the lows that academic immigrants feel as they search for both a country and an institution they can call home. Formative events led these scholars to pursue careers outside their native lands, and Lemish details the challenges they faced adapting to unspoken expectations in their new countries and workplaces. Ultimately, Lemish’s research reveals the strategies that immigrant professors use to bridge their native and adoptive cultures while highlighting the vital contributions they have made to academia as scholars, teachers, and leaders. Her analysis aligns with Buckminister Fuller’s vision for global unity and shared humanity in the pursuit of a critical path for our future.
Dafna Lemish is a Distinguished Professor and Interim Dean at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, the founding editor of the Journal of Children and Media, and a Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA). She is the author of numerous books and articles on children, media and gender representations. She is proud to have served as Dean of the College of Mass Communication and Media Arts at SIU Carbondale (now the College of Arts and Media) and is looking forward to returning here for Global Fusion 2025 to present the research from her new book, Always an Academic Immigrant: A Collective Memoire (Rutgers University Press, 2025) https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/always-an-academic-immigrant/9781978843615.
If you have any questions, email us at: global.fusion.2025@siu.edu