The goal here is to create an entire akka ActorSystem for each test case with minimum boilerplate required for each test.

scalatest+testkit: per-test ActorSystem

import org.junit.runner.RunWith
import org.scalatest.junit.JUnitRunner
import org.scalatest.FunSuite
import akka.actor._
import akka.actor.Actor.emptyBehavior
import akka.testkit.{TestKit, ImplicitSender}

class DummyActor extends Actor {
  val receive = emptyBehavior
}

abstract class ActorTestCase extends TestKit(ActorSystem("per-test-actorsystem")) with ImplicitSender

@RunWith(classOf[JUnitRunner])
class DummyTest extends FunSuite {
  
  // can this syntax be simplified to implicitly create an ActorTestCase with a constructor provided here?
  test("foo") (
    new ActorTestCase {
      // system provided by TestKit
      val ref = system.actorOf(Props[DummyActor], "mydummy")

      // assert and === provided by FunSuite
      assert(ref.isTerminated === false)
    }
  )
}