Malvika's works are situated in the fields of, Ethnic, National, and Religious Identities, Everyday Religion, Religious Plurality, Practice and Co-existence, Partition and Borderland Studies, Reflexive-Ethnography, Gender and Field, among others. Through a focus on these, her works have been exploring the key question; how do people/communities with symbolic/social/cultural and political boundaries, live together? A large part of her work is based in Jammu and Kashmir, a place she comes from. She looks at the social manifestation of, religious, national and ethnic boundaries between and within groups, in the shadow of the giant-nation state border, the line of control here. 

Her recent explorations in everyday religion, practice, and plurality have been based on Materialism and New-Materialism with a key focus on Soundscapes besides other everyday material objects associated with religion. 

Malvika is a Nehru-Fulbright Post-doctoral Fellow at Wesleyan. She has a Sociology/social anthropology doctorate from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has previously worked, at the Sociology unit, Institute of Economic Growth New Delhi.