Her research lies at the intersections of sexuality, gender, health, and the politics of subject-formation in India, and more recently, within the immigrant South Asian queer community in the U.S. She is the author of With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hijra Identity in South India (University of Chicago Press, 2005), an ethnography that problematizes representations of hijras as the so-called ‘third sex’ of India and challenges the sufficiency of sexuality and gender performativity as adequate glosses on hijra identification. Her research locates such figures of sexual difference, and the domain of sexuality more generally, within a broader field of social difference, exploring the intersections of gender and sexuality with religion, race, ethnicity, and class in South Asia and its diaspora.