[8] Chatterjee has focused her research on themes related to slavery, monasticism, and the household in the context of South Asia's past.
Chatterjee's first book, Gender, Slavery and Law in Colonial India, explores the intersections between kinship, dependence, and enslavement complexities that lead to a more nuanced appreciation of slave agency and subalternity.
[9] Judith Walsh describes the book as "focused on contemporary company and governmental records, laws related to slavery, and the role of East India Company in terms of manipulating and reinterpreting indigenous slave institutions in ways considered appropriate to British laws regarding marriage and kinship.
"[10] Chatterjee published a book in 2004, and highlighted how "local narratives, both in what they silenced and in what they expressed, shaped how families understood and represented themselves.
"[14] Her 2013 book, Forgotten Friends, Monks, Marriages and Memories of Northeast India is reviewed by Ruth Gamble as "a work which has commendable application of historical methodology, and tends to cover a long time frame too, from the early medieval period to the twentieth century.
[16] While giving insights on the studies related to abolition in the subcontinent, she stated that "trans-oceanic histories are not separable from the domain of colonial fiscal or revenue policies."