Webster Geneva Promotes Faculty Members Francesco Arese Visconti, Lionel Fatton

Dr. Ryan Guffey congratulates Professor Lionel Fatton on his promotion to Associate Professor at Webster Geneva in 2026

Francesco Arese Visconti, PhD, and Lionel Fatton, PhD, longtime members of the permanent faculty at the Webster Geneva Campus, were promoted to the rank of Professor and Associate Professor, respectively, early this year.

The promotion followed a rigorous review process guided by Webster’s standards for senior faculty advancement that recognize not only scholarly achievements, but also long-term contributions to the growth and reputation of Webster Geneva.

Since joining Webster Geneva Campus in 2007, Arese Visconti has taught courses in visual communications and media studies. He steadily expanded his responsibilities, serving as Head of the Media Studies Program, Deputy Academic Director and Director of the Webster Center for Creativity and Innovation. Arese Visconti’s research interests lie at the intersection of visual communication, migration studies, cultural identity and photographic representation.

His book publications demonstrate a sustained commitment to researching and visualizing migration narratives across multiple contexts, including his most recent volume, "The Invisible Diaspora: Rethinking Photographic Portraiture of 21st Century Italian Migrants in the Arc Lémanique Area (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024)." Arese Visconti’s latest peer-reviewed article, “In Media Stat Virus: Visual Semiotics in the Age of Coronavirus,” has officially passed the anonymous peer-review process and been accepted for publication in The Journal of Communication and Media Studies in 2026. He has been a long-standing member of ARI@CH (Associazione Ricercatrici e Ricercatori Italiani in Svizzera) since 2018 and of the Union Suisse de Photographes Professionels SIYU since 2009. He has also been a member of Spectrum (Association of Photographic Research Institutions in Switzerland) since 2023. In 2025, he joined The Image Research Network and became a member of the Editorial Board of the International Journal of the Image.

Fatton joined Webster Geneva Campus as an adjunct in 2016, became Assistant Professor in 2018 and Head of the BA in International Relations in 2024. His teaching revolves around international relations theories, foreign policy analysis, Asian area studies and research methodology. In terms of research. Fatton is a neoclassical realist who focuses on security dynamics in the Indo-Pacific region and specifically, East Asia, China-Taiwan-Japan-U.S. relations and Japanese foreign security policy. Fatton has published extensively in journals such as International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies, The Asia-Pacific Journal, and Contemporary Security Policy. His latest monograph, “Japan’s Rush to the Pacific War: The Institutional Roots of Overbalancing,” was released in 2023 by Palgrave Macmillan.

Apart from his position at Webster, Fatton is Research Collaborator at Meiji University and Managing Editor of the journal Asian Security. He holds a PhD in International Relations from Sciences Po Paris and two MA degrees - one from the Geneva Graduate Institute and one from Waseda University. Fatton also received the Qualification aux fonctions de maître de conférences en science politique delivered by the Conseil national des universités de France and is a Hall of Fame member of the Association of Correspondents Accredited to the United Nations.