The major thrust areas of the department are Socio-cultural anthropology and Physical/Biological anthropology. The scholars of Socio-cultural anthropology study the ethnographies of rural, tribal, and urban societies with an eye to understand the changing dimensions of culture and society. Other researches on this area are focused on Indigenous Knowledge, Anthropology of Education, Visual Anthropology, and Tribal Studies focusing on the issue of development. The second major thrust area is Physical/Biological anthropology, researches are conducted on Human Genetics, Growth and Nutrition, Forensic Anthropology. In addition to this, the sub-fields such as Medical Anthropology, Disaster Studies, and Archaeological Anthropology combine both socio-cultural and biological perspectives and at enumerable points, it requires the intrusion of data and theory from each other. One of the main focuses of these thrust areas is research methodology and fieldwork tradition, and the students of the department are given field exposure through one month of rigorous fieldwork in the remote tribal areas.