For over a decade now, Ana Jelnikar’s main research interest has revolved around the cultural and literary connections between India and Slovenia in the wider historical context of former Yugoslavia and East-Central Europe. Her area of study encompasses (post)colonial Indian modernity, Bengali literature, Anglophone Indian writers, the history of nationalisms and universalisms in South Asia and Europe, intellectual history of ideas (e.g. hospitality), avant-garde artistic movements between the two world wars, etc. Her approach draws critically on cultural and postcolonial studies perspectives. She has conducted extensive fieldwork in India (West Bengal), where in 2011/12 she was a visiting fellow at Presidency University in Calcutta and in 2015/16 at Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of South Asian Studies (MAKAIAS). In 2009/10 she was a teaching assistant for the course on modern Bengali culture at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Over the years she has given guest lectures both in Slovenia and abroad, and presented at a dozen international conferences in Europe, Canada and Asia.
- JELNIKAR, Ana and MOTOH, Helena, 2021. Potovanje v Indijo: misijonarska potopisa, konteksti in analize [A Passage to India: Two Missionary Travelogues, Contexts and Analyses]. Koper: Annales ZRS, 303 pages.
- JELNIKAR, Ana, 2021. “Marija Sreš, misijonarka, ki je postala indijska pisateljica: k novim smerem proučevanja misijonskih sester” [ “Marija Sreš, Missionary who Became an Indian Writer: Toward New Trends in Researching Women Missionaries,” ] Two Homelands/Dve domovini, no. 53, pp. 63–78.
- –––––, 2019. “Slovene Women Missionaries in India: Contexts, Methods and Considerations,” Two Homelands/Dve domovini, no. 50, pp. 7–13.
- –––––. 2019. [“‘Alone in the Face of God’: A Self-Made Path of Missionary Marija Sreš” ]. In: JELNIKAR, Ana (ed.), SREŠ, Marija. Misijonarka pripoveduje/Missionary Speaks. Ljubljana: Buča, 9–23.
- –––––. 2018. »’Sveti eksperiment’: misijonske zdravstvene sestre ali kako v Katoliški cerkvi redovnice postanejo zdravnice«. [“‘A Holy Experiment’: Medical Mission Sisters or How Nuns within the Catholic Church Became Doctors”], Glasnik slovenskega etnološkega društva, vol. 58, no. 3/4, pp. 77–90.
- –––––, 2016. Universalist hopes in India and Europe: the worlds of Rabindranath Tagore and Srečko Kosovel. 1st ed. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. XV, 383 pages.
- –––––. Hospitality and Worldliness: Tagore's Household Drama of Love and Responsibility, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 39:1, pp. 350-367.
- –––––, 2015. Waiting for the second cup of tea : unconditional hospitality in Rabindranath Tagoreʼs Gora. In: BHATTACHARYA, Nandini (ed.). Rabindranath Tagore Gora : a critical companion. 1st ed. Delhi: Primus Books, pp. 92-116.
- –––––, 2015. Srečko Kosovel and Rabindranath Tagore : universalist hopes from the margins of Europe. In: RAZA, Ali (ed.). The internationalist moment : South Asia, worlds, and world views, 1917-1939. New Dehli: SAGE Publications, pp. 188-228.
- –––––, 2015. Hospitality in colonial India : ancient legacy, modern tool of resistance. Annales, Series historia et sociologia, year 25, no. 2, pp. 285-294
- –––––, 2014. Yugoslavia and its successors. In: KÄMPCHEN, Martin (ed.), BANGHA, Imre (ed.). Rabindranath Tagore: one hundred years of global reception. New Delhi: Orient Blackswan Private Limited, pp. 275-295.
- –––––, 2012. Tagore's universalist sparks: a creative approach. In: DASGUPTA, Sanjukta (ed.), GUHA, Chinmoy (ed.). Tagore: at home in the world. New Delhi: SAGE Publications, pp. 291-304.
- –––––, 2011. Tagore, Rabindranath. In: CHATTERJEE, Deen K. (ed.). Encyclopedia of global justice, (Springer reference). Dordrecht [etc.]: Springer, pp. 1051-1055.
- –––––, 2010. Evropa in njeni "drugi": Kosovel zre na "vzhod". Jezik in slovstvo, year 55, no. 5/6, pp. 35-56.
- –––––, 2008. W.B. Yeats's (mis)reading of Tagore: interpreting an alien culture. University of Toronto quarterly, vol. 77, no. 4, pp. 1005-1024.
Ethnographies of Land and Water Routes: A Comparative Approach to (Im)mobility (research project • July 1, 2014 - June 30, 2017)
BA English Language and Literature (major), Sociology (minor) University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts (Slovenia), 1999
MA (cum laude) Humanities (English Literature, Postcolonial Context) The Open University in the North, Newcastle Upon Tyne, 2004
PhD, Languages and Literatures of South Asia and East European Studies, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, 2009