Jatindra Kumar Nayak retired as a Professor of English from Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha in 2016. He was Visiting Professor at Ravenshaw University(2017-2019) and at IIT, Bhubaneswar(2022). He was earlier a Visiting Fellow at Delhi University and Jadavpur University.
He won KATHA Translation Award in 1997 and Hutch-Crossword Book Award in 2004. His English translations of classic Odia novels have been published by the University of California Press, Oxford University Press, and Penguin books. He is Editor-in-Chief of margASIA, a biannual journal focussing on Asian literature and culture. At present, he is a Member of, the English Advisory Board, Sahitya Akademi, Language Expert, and the New India Foundation. He coedited the book, ‘Critical Discourse in Odia’, which was published by Taylor and Francis in the U.K. in January 2022.