Varon graduated from Swarthmore College (B.A.,1985), and from Yale University, (Ph.D., 1993).

She was professor of history at Wellesley College, and Temple University.

[2] She was co-director of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.

[3] Varon served as the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford for the 2023-24 academic year.

[4] She and her husband, William I. Hitchcock, reside in Charlottesville, Virginia.