Humphrey has conducted research in Siberia, Nepal, India, Mongolia, China (Inner Mongolia), Uzbekistan and Ukraine. In 1966, she was one of the first
Anthropologist from a western country to be allowed to do fieldwork in the USSR. Her PhD (1973) focussed on Buryat religious iconography, and ensuing research topics have included Soviet collective farms, the farming economy in India and Tibet, Jainist culture in India, and environmental and cultural conservation in Inner Asia. Between 1971 and 1978, she undertook research, holding a fellowship at
Girton College, Cambridge and at a post at the
Scott Polar Research Institute. From 1978 to 1983 she lectured at the Department of Social Anthropology at the
University of Cambridge, before becoming a director of studies in archaeology and anthropology in 1984-89, and 1992-96. Humphrey has held the posts of university reader in Asian anthropology, University of Cambridge, 1995–98; university professor of Asian anthropology, 1998–2006; visiting professor at the University of Michigan, 2000; and Rausing Professorship of Collaborative Anthropology, 2006–10. In 1986 she co-founded the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit (MIASU) at Cambridge, together with
Urgunge Onon. She retired from her post as Sigrid Rausing Professor of Collaborative Anthropology at the
University of Cambridge to become Voluntary Research Director of MIASU in October 2010. She has been a Fellow of
King's College, Cambridge since 1978. In 2010, she completed the manuscript of a monograph, jointly written with Hurelbaatar Ujeed, entitled
A Monastery in Time: the Making of Mongolian Buddhism. The book was the culmination of fieldwork and visits, from 1995, to Mergen Monastery in the
Urad Mongols region of Inner Mongolia (China), where a distinctive form of Mongolian-language Buddhism has survived since the 18th century. ==Honours==