[2] Blackman registered to study at the Pitt Rivers Museum from 1912 to 1915, taking the Diploma in Anthropology at the University of Oxford.
[7] She was also a contemporary of the German ethnographer Hans Alexander Winkler and encouraged him to pursue his work in Upper Egypt, despite others discouraging him and his "radical" views.
[9][10] She had a particular interest in the "magico-religious" ideas and practices of Upper Egypt[1] and the experiences of ordinary rural peasantry, the fellaheen.
[11] She recorded women's fertility rituals,[12][13] belief in the healing properties of tattoo marks (made by instruments of 7 needles fixed to the end of a stick)[14] and methods for treating spirit possession.
[6] She was provided with BWC manufactured travelling medicines chests when collecting and exchanged "modern" pharmaceutical products for ethnographic objects.