[1][2] He was born in Sirohi, Rajasthan, India in a Jain family and now resides and works in Leeds.

[9][10] He has been a long-term visiting professor at the University of Oxford since 2013, and was adjunct faculty with the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad from 2012 to 2014.

[16][21][22][23] The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology's 2020 Virtual Symposium on Directional Statistics was dedicated to Mardia.

[25] A festschrift honoring his work resulted in an edited volume, Geometry Driven Statistics.

[19][29] Mardia was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2023 New Year Honours for services to statistical science.