Anjali DasSarma

Anjali DasSarma’s research examines both the cultural studies and critical political economy of journalism, centering journalists as actors in the production of knowledge, norms, and history and as well as structures of media power, capitalism, and hegemony.

DasSarma’s work traces power, resistance, and memory, from colonial American newspapers to future(s) of journalism. She is invested in projects of dismantling capitalism and colonialism alongside building structures of hope and repair. At Annenberg, she is a fellow at the Center for Media at Risk, the Media, Inequality and Change Center, and the Center for Advanced Research for Global Communication.

She has also collaborated with Media 2070, a media reparations project under the organization Free Press, as a MIC Fellow, researching the structures of race and exclusion that have historically and continue to uphold systemic racism. DasSarma was the 2024 COMPASS Fellow, working at Free Press in Washington, D.C.

DasSarma received her Bachelor of Arts in Media and Communication Studies from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2021. During her undergraduate career, she was Editor-in-Chief of the student newspaper and interned at The Baltimore Sun, and the Newseum, among other institutions.

Following these experiences, she completed her Master of Arts in American Studies at Brown University in 2022. While at Brown, her research focused on the relationship between Indigenous slavery and the history of American journalism, and she served as a Research Assistant on the Stolen Relations project, a database that aims to archive stories of Indigenous enslavement. This work culminated in a co-authored article entitled “The Persistence of Indigenous Unfreedom in Early American Newspaper Advertisements, 1704-1804” published in the journal Slavery & Abolition.