Dr. Anita Varma is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media at UT Austin, where she focuses on media ethics. She also leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative at the Center for Media Engagement, where she is a senior faculty research associate. As a publicly engaged scholar, Varma’s work focuses on the role of solidarity in journalism.
Varma served as chair of the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) from 2022-2023. She serves on the board of the Press On: A Southern Collective for Movement Journalism and The Objective, and previously served on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California Chapter). Before joining the School of Journalism and Media, she was the assistant director of Journalism & Media Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara University), and a visiting lecturer at UC Berkeley’s School of Journalism.
Varma received her Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University. Her dissertation, Solidarity in Action: A Case Study of Journalistic Humanizing Techniques in the San Francisco Homeless Project, received the inaugural Penn State Davis Ethics Award. Her scholarly work has been published in Communication, Culture, and Critique, Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, Journalism, Journal of Communication Inquiry, Routledge Companion to Media and Poverty, Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (second edition), and A Handbook of Global Media Ethics (SpringerLink). She believes journalism can help change the world for the better, and dedicates herself to helping journalists do their best work.
