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Dr. Ada Cheng named 2023–2024 Lund-Gill Chair

Ada Cheng is an excavator of stories.

As a facilitator of storytelling workshops, Cheng creates spaces to help ordinary people — often from marginalized groups — dig deep and tell their truths.

In 2016, Cheng, a sociology researcher and professor, left a tenured teaching position at a Chicago university to pursue performance art. She leads workshops that help people tap into their inner stories, with a focus on amplifying the voices of LGBTQ+ and people of color whose stories and perspectives are not often told.

She also appears in storytelling shows and solo performances; speaks to colleges, universities and organizations on topics of social justice, sexual assault, violence, and gender, among other issues; and has written articles, plays, and a memoir of her transition from professor to performer.

Cheng says she uses storytelling to highlight societal inequities, raise awareness of issues, and bring about healing.

2023-2024 Lund-Gill Lecture

Dr. Ada Cheng: A Full Circle Home
Tuesday, October 10, 2023, 5:30 p.m.
Eloise Martin Recital Hall
Dominican University

Dr. Ada Cheng, an educator-turned-artist, will weave together stories and literary writings to present the power of storytelling and examine its critical role in academia as a path for inquiry, dialogue, and transformation. She will reflect upon a path forward toward transformation and healing, through which story-sharing serves as a process of truth-claiming, witnessing, and affirmation. This performance is 50 minutes, followed by a facilitated dialogue.  

About the Lund-Gill Chair

The endowed Lund-Gill Chair was established in 2003 to recognize the extraordinary accomplishments of two Dominican Sisters, Candida Lund, OP, and Cyrille Gill, OP.  The Lund-Gill Chair was created in order to bring to our campus individuals of the highest moral and intellectual reputation who can address themes and issues at the heart of the liberal arts and sciences and at the intersections of academia and society.

Former Lund-Gill Scholars:

2023-2024: Ada Cheng (SOC/ENG). Sociology researcher and professor and social justice advocate.

2022-2023: Sandra Delgado, (THEA/ENG).  Writer and performer.

2021-2022: Luis Argueta (Communication Arts and Sciences)—Guatemalan film-maker.

2020-2021: None (COVID).

2019–2020: Marion Weedermann, PhD, professor of mathematics at Dominican University

2018-2019; 2017–2018: Molly J. Giblin, PhD, instructor in the Department of History at the University of Memphis

2016–2017: Robert Calin-Jageman, PhD, professor of psychology and director of the neuroscience program, Dominican University.

2015–2016: Sr. M. Paul McCaughey, Archbishop of Chicago's Delegate for School Advancement and Advocacy.

2014–2015: Ana Castillo, internationally acclaimed creative writer, scholar, editor, and translator.

2013–2014: Tricia Rose, Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.

2012–2013: Christopher Kennedy, Chairman of Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises.

2011–2012: Eboo Patel, PhD, founder and the executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core. 

2010–2011: Chia-Feng Chang, PhD, Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence and expert in Chinese science and medicine. 

2009–2010: Father Richard Woods, OP, professor of theology and former chair of the Ekhart Society .

2008–2009: Stephen Kinzer, a prize-winning journalist with the Boston Globe and New York Times.

2007–2008: David Bevington, the Phyllis Fay Horton Distinguished Service Professor in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.

2006–2007: Leon Lederman, Nobel prize-winning physicist who was the inaugural chair.