Dr. Anita Varma is a publicly engaged educator and journalism researcher currently based in Austin, Texas. Her ongoing academic research examines the role of solidarity in journalism on social injustice. She leads the Solidarity Journalism Initiative, which helps journalists improve coverage of marginalized people. Her book, Solidarity in Action: How Ethical Journalism Fights for Social Justice, is in progress.

Dr. Varma received her PhD in Communication in 2018 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 in 2019. In 2023, Dr. Varma received the James Murphy Top Faculty Paper Award for her lead authored study, “‘They Always Get Our Story Wrong’: Addressing Social Justice Activists’ News Distrust through Solidarity Reporting.”

Her scholarly work has been published in Journalism Studies, Journalism Practice, and Journalism. She has contributed to the Routledge Companion to Media and Poverty and A Handbook of Global Media Ethics (SpringerLink). Dr. Varma has a forthcoming contribution to the Routledge Companion to Digital Journalism Studies (2nd edition).

Dr. Varma was the assistant director of Journalism and Media Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics until 2021. At Stanford, she was a teaching fellow and received the 2015 Centennial Teaching Award from Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. Before Stanford, Dr. Varma was an online advertising strategist at Google for three years.

Dr. Varma completed her BA in Media Studies with honors from Vassar College, where she was a community journalist and interned at The New Yorker magazine as well as the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press. She serves on the boards of the Society of Professional Journalists (Northern California Chapter), Press On: A Southern Collective for Movement Journalism, The Objective, and the Solidarity History Initiative.