Michael Leslie to Retire from UFCJC in May 2025
Michael Leslie, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications (UFCJC) Media Production, Management, and Technology associate professor, will retire at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.
During his 35-year tenure at the UFCJC, Leslie served as the UFCJC Faculty Senate president, where he led an effort integrating race, class and gender studies across the College’s curriculum and spearheaded conversations on racial diversification of faculty. He was a faculty adviser to The Agency, leading a climate study to improve racial and gender sensitivity and diversity within the student agency.
Leslie published an edited volume on media and democracy in Africa, and multiple journal and book chapters on race, media, politics, culture and society in the U.S., China, Africa and Latin America. He also co-organized two interdisciplinary and international conferences on the Africa-United States-China connection and presented scholarship at various international conferences around the world.
As an international visiting professor, he has taught, lived and conducted research in Asia, Europe, Latin America and Africa, including China, India, Belgium, France, Mexico, Cuba, Colombia, Brazil, Zambia, Cameroon, South Africa, Mozambique and Angola. He has lectured on ethical leadership, mass communication and society and race in media at more than 20 universities.
Leslie first visited China as part of a UF academic delegation in November 2011 and has returned to lecture there six times. He served as senior foreign expert in the School of English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University and taught leadership at the Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the Jaypee Institute of Information Technology in India. He also served as a Fulbright Senior Specialist in Intercultural Communication at the University of Mons-Hainault, Belgium, from 2002 and 2004.
Prior to joining UFCJC, he was a Fulbright Senior Lecturer from 1987 to 1989 at the Advanced School of Mass Communication at the University of Yaounde, Cameroon, and was co-founder of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of Zambia, where he lectured from 1984 to 1987.
Leslie was the author or co-author on 11 articles published in refereed journals, including Global Media Journal, Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Africa Media Review and the Journal of Communication and Social Change. He was also the author of 20 conference presentations.
His honors include an AEJMC Research Fellowship, a Poynter Institute Teaching Fellowship, a UF Research and Development Award, an International Radio and Television Foundation Stephen H. Coltrin Award for Excellence in Communications and a UF Center for Global and Transnational Studies Research Award.
Posted: December 6, 2024
Category: College News
Tagged as: Michael Leslie, MPMT
