Dafna Lemish

Dafna Lemish was born in 1951 in Haifa

Dafna Lemish was born in Haifa in 1951 and grew up in the Kiryat Shalom neighborhood of Tel Aviv, where she attended Ironi Tet high school. Her family later moved to Givatayim. She married Peter Lemish in 1975.

She earned a BA in geography at Tel Aviv University and an MA in communication at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1977 she began doctoral studies in communication at Ohio State University, where she completed her Ph.D.

After returning to Israel in 1982, she taught at Oranim College and worked at the Institute for the Research of Media and the Family. She helped found the New School of Media Studies at the College of Management. In 1995 she joined the founding team of the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University, where she taught until 2010 and served as chair.

In 2010 she became a department chair at Southern Illinois University and later dean of its College of Mass Communication and Media Arts. In 2016 she moved to Rutgers University, became a Distinguished Professor in 2019, and served as interim dean of its School of Communication and Information from 2022 to 2025. She is the founding editor of the Journal of Children and Media.