His principal interest lies in Sanskrit language and literature, coupled with long-term investment in premodern Tamil, and in the cultural, political, and social history of far southern India. His recent research has touched on a wide spectrum of issues, including the political history of the major imperial dynasty of the medieval Tamil country; the centuries-long connections between the southern reaches of the subcontinent and the valley of Kashmir in the northwest; the transformations of late-medieval textual scholarship; Sanskrit and Tamil literary theory; modes of premodern historical writing in Sanskrit; and the pan-Indic traditions of the tantric worship of the Hindu deity Shiva.