Serena Nanda is an American author, anthropologist, and professor emeritus. She was born on August 13, 1938 in New York City and received her PhD in anthropology from New York University. She is the co-author of two anthropology textbooks, *Culture Counts: A Concise Introduction to Cultural Anthropology* and *Cultural Anthropology*. Among her areas of specialty was the topic of gender diversity, having written the major reference book on the hijras of India, *Neither Man nor Woman: The Hijras of India*, for which she received the Ruth Benedict Prize in 1990. As of August 2021, she was a professor emeritus at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.