The Center for Media Engagement is thrilled to welcome Dr. Craig R. Scott and Dr. Anita Varma to the team as senior faculty research associates. Scott joins the propaganda research lab and Varma joins the journalism research program.
Scott is a senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement as well as Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Prior to that, he spent 14 years at Rutgers University, where he served as department chair and Ph.D. program director. His research and teaching are primarily focused on organizational communication, where he examines issues of anonymity and identity/identification in various organizational settings. His current interests center on “hidden organizations,” which are found when an organization and/or its members conceal key aspects of their identity from various audiences. Scott received his Ph.D. in Communication from Arizona State University in 1994.
Varma is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin as well as a senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement where she leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative. Varma started the Solidarity Journalism Initiative at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara University), where she was the assistant director of Journalism and Media Ethics. As a publicly engaged scholar, Varma’s work focuses on the role of solidarity in journalism. Her research examines how media representations challenge marginalization in the United States. She completed her Ph.D. in Communication at Stanford University in 2018 and received the inaugural Penn State Davis Ethics dissertation award in 2019. Varma believes journalism can help change society for the better and dedicates herself to helping journalists do their best work.