All members of the faculty are actively engaged in research, which has resulted in the publication of a large number of books, reports, and research papers in different fields of sociology. The fieldwork tradition, as well as a comparative perspective, so assiduously cultivated by Prof. M.N. Srinivas, have been kept alive both by members of the faculty and Ph.D. students. The Department has had many illustrious faculty and alumni such as Prof. A.M. Shah, Prof. J.P.S. Uberoi, Professor Andre Betteille, Prof. B.S. Baviskar, Prof. Veena Das, Prof. A.R. Ramaswamy, Prof. Aneeta A. Minocha and so on. The last five have also received their doctorates from the Department.

The Department is known for having opened up several fields of research that were novel in their time such as the study of para political systems, historical sociology, the study of cooperatives and industry, gender and society, symbolism and society, the sociology of science and technology, medical sociology, the study of South West Asia, collective violence, art and visual culture etc Studies have been published or prepared on community power structures, local-level politics, trade unions, co-operatives, textual and contextual studies of Hinduism, religious symbolism, family and kinship, and social and religious movements.  Studies have also been conducted in the fields of stratification, gender, environment, the sociology of development, historical sociology, urban sociology, and medical sociology. The sociology of masculinity, demography, popular culture, education, migration, the sociology of violence and documentary practices of the state are some of the new areas that faculty members are working on at present. The Department has also undertaken several research projects during the last six decades.  Several faculty members are involved in international research projects and  in preparing surveys of research and teaching in the discipline for bodies like the ICSSR.