Dr (Mrs) Anita Khanna, is Professor of Japanese at Jawaharlal Nehru University specializing in classical Japanese literature. She has worked extensively on the presence of Indian themes in Japanese literature with special focus on Buddhist discourse narratives called Setsuwa. She has been engaged in the comparative study of Indian and Japanese discourse narratives based on the landmark collection of Konjaku Monogatarish (12th century) and has authored Jataka Stories in Japan (1999). She has also authored works like “Ancient Japanese Literature, A critical Survey 2002”, and Japani Sahitya (An Overview of Japanese Literature from Ancient to Modern) 2003. She has been editor of some of the Journals devoted to teaching Japanese language and literature and has authored several research articles.
She has been Japan Foundation Research Fellow at Osaka University, International Institute of Japanese Culture Kyoto, and Fellow Researcher at National Institute of Japanese Literature, Tokyo.
She is the Chairperson of Centre for Japanese, Korean and North-East Asian Studies at School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies in Jawaharlal Nehru University, her alma mater, where she teaches Japanese language and literature.