Durba Mitra’s scholarship brings together feminist political thought, sexuality studies, and global intellectual history. Mitra is the author of two monographs and numerous research articles, essays, and interviews.

Mitra’s first book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought(Princeton University Press, 2020), demonstrates how ideas of deviant female sexuality became foundational to modern social thought. It was recognized for scholarly achievement with the Bernard S. Cohn Book Prize from the Association of Asian Studies, an honorable mention for the Law and Society Association’s J. Willard Hurst Book Prize for the best work in socio-legal history, and an honorable mention for the Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Award from the International Studies Association.

Mitra's second book, The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism (Princeton University Press, 2026) offers a pathbreaking history of women from former colonies in South Asia, Africa, the Caribbean, and beyond who wrote Third World feminism into being, catalyzing a momentous expansion of knowledge about women, gender, and sexuality that has transformed emancipatory politics across the globe. As part of her research for The Future That Was, Mitra was the curator of a multimedia exhibit, "Solidarity! Transnational Feminisms Then and Now," at the Poorvu Gallery at the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. She has several ongoing book projects, including a book on social and political theories of mutual aid, a book on the rise of global feminist environmentalism, and a curation of interviews with global feminist thinkers.

Mitra is the recipient of numerous fellowships and prizes including a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, a Shelby Cullom Davis Center fellowship at Princeton University, a Wolf Humanities Forum fellowship at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Fulbright-Nehru research fellowship for India. Mitra received the 2021 Walter Channing Cabot Fellow Award for “distinguished accomplishments in the fields of literature, history, or art” from Harvard University. She received the 2019 Roslyn Abramson Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at Harvard, which recognizes teachers for “excellence and sensitivity in teaching undergraduates” and the 2020 Star Family Prize for Excellence in Faculty Advising. Her teaching innovation has been recognized with the Mellon Foundation-Schlesinger Library Course Award in 2019–2020 and the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning Gold Star Teaching Award in 2020. Mitra was named as a “Favorite Professor” three years in a row by the Harvard College Classes of 2021, 2022 and 2023.