In theforefront of academic inquiries on the operation of violence during communal riots, muchof her work has also centred around the conceptualisation of‘ordinariness’—the everyday lives of people involved in big dramaticevents. She has served on the panel for Human Rights Education, the InternationalCommission for the health of the Bhopal gas victims and the Committee on the South AsianPolitical Economy. One of the first sociologists to deal with subjects like technology,development and medicine as sociological concepts, Das says that "the involvementwith the life of the mind is what distinguishes the pursuit of knowledge from all otherpursuits." And above all, she says, she loves and enjoys teaching.