Dr. Anita Varma leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative. She is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media at UT Austin, where she focuses on media ethics. She is also a senior faculty research associate at the Center for Media Engagement. Varma’s research, teaching, and public engagement all focus on the role of solidarity in journalism. She is on the board of the Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California Chapter), the advisory board of The Objective, and previously served as chair of the Media Ethics Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). Prior to UT Austin, she was the assistant director of Journalism & Media Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara University), where she started the Solidarity Journalism Initiative.
Varma received her Ph.D. in Communication from Stanford University, and 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, Communication, Culture and Critique, Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (second edition), 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.
Varma’s work has been funded by the American Council of Learned Societies, Democracy Fund, Moody College of Communication, and The University of Texas at Austin.