[2] During her academic career, she was a professorial fellow in Fall 2010 at the Free University of Berlin Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures.
[5][6] In a review for the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Heidi Pauwels wrote Dalmia's contribution to the collection "unravels masterfully the complicated fabric of nineteenth-century "traditionalist" (sanātana) reconstructions of Hinduism" in her analysis of works by Bhāratendu Hariśchandra.
[6] Dalmia also authored The Nationalization of Hindu Traditions: Bhāratendu Hariśchandra and Nineteenth Century Banaras, which was published in 1997 by Oxford University Press.
[9] In a review for the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Emilia Bachrach discusses the attention on gender and the role of women in the collection, and states "It is in fact the author herself that shines through as the book's most notable woman," and also writes, "It is worth noting that throughout the articles - often in her framing of a historical problem - Dalmia critically analyzes (and laments) the rise of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva) in ways that significantly inform her careful unpacking of religious histories.
"[10] Natalia Guzevataia writes in a review for Politics, Religion & Ideology, "Every essay in the book presents an account from colonial or, more rarely, precolonial reality, based on extensive archival work, followed by a series of questions illuminating the relations between them and the modernity.
[12][13] In a review for The Indian Economic & Social History Review, Prabhat Kumar writes, "Since the story of what the author calls modernisation (i.e., the co-constitution of North Indian cities, Hindu Hindi middle class and the articulation of a range of its cultural experience and emotion—political and sexual, public and intimate, social and individual, pragmatic and romantic and so forth) is best captured in Hindi fiction, she titles her book Fiction as History.