Virginia Harrison is an associate professor in the Bellisario College of Communications. She teaches undergraduate public relations courses in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations.
Her research centers around the concept of stewardship, primarily in the context of nonprofit-donor relationships. She aims to better define, measure, and understand how dialogic stewardship plays a role in deepening nonprofit donor engagement and to explore its value in other contexts with attention to ethical donor relations. Her secondary area of interest is better understanding how corporate social responsibility and athlete advocacy impacts sports stakeholder relationships.
Before earning her Ph.D. from Penn State, she spent seven years in public relations and fundraising practice. Dr. Harrison's work has been published in top public relations, nonprofit, and sports communication journals, such as Journal of Public Relations Research, Public Relations Review, and Communication & Sport. She has presented numerous papers at International Communication Association and Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication conferences, where she has won top paper awards. She is a three-time Page/Johnson Legacy Scholar from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication (2022, 2024, 2026) and has been invited to present her work to fundraising professionals. She joined the Bellisario College faculty in 2026.
