Leide Porcu is an Italian-born American psychoanalyst and anthropologist who has lived and worked in the United States for more than thirty years. She teaches Clinical Practices with Immigrants and Refugees at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College (CUNY), and maintains a private psychotherapy practice in New York City.
Leide earned her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 2002 and was a scholar at the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies at Columbia University the following year. She holds a Laurea in Languages and Foreign Literatures from the University of Cagliari, Italy (1993, 100 e lode), with a thesis in French literature titled Tabarin, Charlatan de la Place Dauphine. She is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research’s adult psychoanalytic program and completed the Beck Institute’s extramural program in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in 2007. She is also a Level 1 Certified Coach through the Symbiosis Coaching Program, an ICF-accredited training (2024).
Alongside her clinical career, she has taught anthropology at Columbia University and Fordham University. She currently teaches Clinical Practices with Immigrants and Refugees at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College (CUNY), and has published scholarly and creative work and presented at international conferences. Her academic training was complemented by clinical work and volunteer experience.
Since October 2021, she has served on Com.It.Es (Comitato degli Italiani all’Estero), the representative body of Italian citizens abroad, elected by the Italian community in the Tri-State area and Bermuda. She currently serves as President of the Commission for Outreach, Mental Health, Sports, and Youth, working closely with the Italian Consulate in New York on outreach initiatives, mental health advocacy, and programs supporting immigrants, young people, and families.
In parallel, she volunteers with immigrants who are among the most socially and economically vulnerable, particularly those from non-Italian backgrounds, offering outreach, support, and culturally informed mental health guidance.
Her forthcoming nonfiction book, Neither Here Nor There: A Guide for Immigrants and Those Who Walk With Them (Routledge, 2026), blends personal narrative, clinical insight, and cultural commentary.
Her publications span creative literature, anthropology, and psychology, including:

“The Prison of Shame: Finding a Passage Through Dreams,” The Psychoanalytic Review, Vol. 104, No. 5, 2017.
“Street to Home: The Experiences of Long-term, Unsheltered, Homeless Individuals in an Outreach and Housing Placement Program,” Qualitative Social Work, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2010 (with John J. Jost and Aaron J. Lewitt).
“Fishy Business: Humor in a Sardinian Fish Market,” Humor – International Journal of Humor Research, Vol. 18, No. 1, 2005.
“Explosion: Fragments of Language,” River City: A Journal of Contemporary Culture, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1997.

Her upcoming applied work includes the development and facilitation of workshops on dream interpretation; intercultural communication for global teams; resilience and stress management; flourishing as an immigrant or expatriate; and navigating grief and loss in professional and social contexts.
A longer-term project involves returning to her earlier ethnographic work on a Sardinian fish market and transforming it into a richly layered, non-academic book exploring globalization, cultural loss, and family dynamics, rooted in her own family history: her father worked as a wholesaler in the fish market, and her extended family has been involved in the fish trade for generations.