[3] After returning to civilian life, Godfrey's academic interests were redirected to anthropology by an encounter with Edward Evans-Pritchard, under whom he subsequently studied at Oxford.
[citation needed] His chosen field of research were the Dinka of southern Sudan, a people closely related to the Nuer studied by his mentor, (1947–50) and the Anuak (1952-1954).
[4] His methodology shows an acute sensitivity to the dangers of translating key words in an indigenous lexicon concerning belief and religion, for example, into Western languages.
[5] Sudan drifted into a civil war, and many of the native people he had got to know were swept up in the chronic violence of the area, Lienhardt found writing about his field increasingly difficult, particularly since he found himself at odds with the rising vogue for theory in anthropology, which overtook the practice of ethnological description.
[citation needed] The dilemma he faced in struggling with expectations that he should replace Evans-Pritchard in the chair of anthropology at Oxford informed Dan Davin's novel Brides of Price (1972).