Debjani earned her PhD from Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. Her research interest includes social history of medicine in colonial India, particularly, history of psychiatry during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her doctoral research was on Insanity and Asylums of Bengal Presidency in the Nineteenth Century. Her book entitled Houses of Madness: Insanity and Asylums of Bengal in Nineteenth Century India was published from Oxford University Press, India in 2015. She teaches in the Department of History, Vidyasagar University, Paschim Medinipur, India.

Debjani Das has got Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Award (Research), 2017. Presently, she is researching on the Transnational History of Psychiatry in the Twentieth Century: Indo-US relation. She is looking at medical knowledge exchanges between Indian and US psychiatric practitioners that emerged in post-1947 independent India. Her project explores the future of the profession and the quality of patient care in twentieth century India and the impact of Indo-US psychiatric knowledge collaboration, innovation, and partnership.