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 is the vice-chair of the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), and serves on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California Chapter). Before joining the School of Journalism & 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 PhD 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 Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, Journalism, Routledge Companion to Media and Poverty, 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.
