His research interests include the exploration of how national and ethnic identities are shaped by social and political processes, particularly how identities shape the ways that people interact with other communities, nation-states and the wider world. His current research trajectories have developed out of initial interests in race and missionary ethnography in colonial South India, and untouchable Indian labour migrants in colonial Singapore. He also has a keen interest in oral histories and the histories of everyday people whose voices have been diminished within traditional archival sources.