[2] At Malinowski's direction[6] she spent her time in Uganda studying social change,[5] returning to the UK in 1932 to submit her dissertation and receive her PhD.

On the eve of World War II, her teaching covered "topics all central to British colonial strategy in the context of rival empires and anti-colonial resistance.

In 1943 she moved to the Ministry of Information, then at the war's end took a job training Australian administrators for work in Papua New Guinea.

According to one obituary, "Perhaps her best- known work in this field was on land tenure and local political organisation, which she rightly saw as factors which must be understood in detail before plans and programmes for change stand any hope of success.".

[9] Mair was throughout her working life closely involved with the Royal Anthropological Institute:[10] after winning the RAI Wellcome medal in 1936 she was the Hon Secretary from 1974 to 1978 and the vice-president for the year 1978–9.