She received an M. A. and a D. Phil. from Oxford University. She joined the faculty of Jadavpur University after having taught at Presidency College and Calcutta University. She is in charge of the UGC funded research programme of the university's English Department.Her scholarship ranges widely over many fields, notably literary theory, modernism, the Renaissance. She specializes in the history of ideas.
She was an Oxford badminton half-blue and holds a black belt in Kyokushinkai karate.
She has edited the following volumes:
Writing Over: Medieval to Renaissance (edited along with Sukanta Chaudhuri), Literature and Gender: Essays for Jasodhara Bagchi (edited along with Sajni Mukherji) (Orient Longman, 2002), Literature and Philosophy: Essays in Connexion (Papyrus, 2006), Petrarch and the Renaissance (edited along with Sukanta Chaudhuri)
She is a major contributor to the Oxford Tagore Tranlsations and has translated Relationships (Jogajog).