[1] She defended her Candidate of Sciences thesis, titled Urban handicraft production in North India, 16th-18th centuries in 1984 at the Institute of Asian and African Countries, Moscow State University.
[2] Critics called her concept of social processes as 'nebulous', while the lack of attention to Timurid forms of governance and the concentration on Hindu traditions of rulership was also criticised.
[3] In her work titled Medieval Indian Mindscapes: Space, Time, Society, Man, Vanina stated that Marxist analyses concentrated on the socio-economic, ignoring the material and spiritual.
Vanina analysed the notion of 'feudalism' as applied to India, on the one hand rejecting it as insufficient from a historiographical perspective, while on the other, inferring from her overarching definition of 'man' and 'society' as essentially on par with feudalism.
Critics nevertheless appreciated the insights drawn from her close readings from medieval texts, albeit with the caveat of their restriction to north and central India, and the lack of female voices.