Migration Museums Network

Lebanese Emigration Research Center

The Lebanese Emigration Research Center (LERC) is an academic initiative of Notre Dame University
LERC, and with it Notre Dame University, aims to address the issue of Lebanese emigration in its global context. It hopes to help the Lebanese emigration and its descendants to understand their origins and cultural roles and to enable people in Lebanon to inform themselves about the nature and scale of the Lebanese migrant experience. It also seeks to address some of the new realities of contemporary emigration out of and into the country.

LERC promotes the study of historical and contemporary emigration, to, from and through Lebanon, within a comparative international scholarly framework, using traditional, alternative and information and communication technology methodologies (ICT). It promotes scholarship, original research and intellectual exchange among scholars and students with an interest in international migration and national development. It researches the relationship and the networks between Lebanese immigrant and diasporic communities in the world as well as the growth and development prospects of Lebanon.

The Center’s ultimate objectives are:
  1. To examine the history of Lebanese emigration in the context of the history of Lebanon, in the history of the host countries and in the context of worldwide migration.
  2. To investigate integration, assimilation, acculturation and ethnicity of the Lebanese in their new homelands.
  3. To study the role of class, gender, language, religion, identity, nationalism, etc. in the Lebanese emigration experience at home and abroad.
  4. To encourage interdisciplinary academic research in this and related fields of Lebanese emigration.
  5. To house the largest single body of research material and memorabilia related to Lebanese emigration

The Lebanon Migration Museum at NDU (Notre Dame University) provides a window into the historical and contemporary experience of emigrants to very different parts of the globe.  Photographs, artwork, documents, and a variety of cultural items lend colour and personal detail to the stories of communities and families in the diaspora.  Rare items are displayed from the LERC Archives, the Lebanese National Archives, and private collections.
The museum, with glass walls granting a spectacular panoramic view of Mount Lebanon, is a place that protects, preserves and presents a growing collection dedicated to the Lebanese emigrant.
Some exhibits already exist for those interested in Lebanese migration, notably the Ellis Island Immigration Museum (New York, USA); the Faris & Yamna Naff Arab American Collection at the National Museum of American History (Washington, D.C., USA); the Near Eastern American Collection at the Immigration History Research Center, University of Minnesota (Minnesota, USA); and Pier 21, Canada’s Immigration Museum (Halifax, Canada).  The Lebanese Emigration Museum here at NDU, inaugurated on December 14, 2005, is the first to be dedicated to the unique cultural heritage of the Lebanese diaspora.

See the official website >>