Whaler stayed at Cambridge in a post-Doctoral role for two years before joining the
University of Leeds in 1983 as a lecturer. In 1994, she moved to the
University of Edinburgh to take up the Chair of Geophysics. Whaler's first papers were related to
inverse theory within Geomagnetism. Her 1981 contribution to a paper by R.L. Parker on 'Numerical methods for establishing solutions to the inverse problem of electromagnetic induction' was highly cited. Following her graduation, Whaler's research turned towards the geomagnetic field within the
Earth's core and
Earth's mantle. Whaler was the principal investigator of a
NERC funded consortium called GEOSPACE (Geomagnetic Earth Observation from SPACE.) This was a 5 year research grant funding the exploitation of data from the new generation of vector magnetic field satellites, and was in operation from 2004 to 2011. and the
East African Rift system starting in 2000, and often involving
magnetotellurics. This is related to improving structural and
tectonic understanding, and assessing hydrocarbon potential. Whaler was a part of the Afar rift consortium, an inter-disciplinary study of how the
Earth’s crust grows at divergent plate boundaries, looking at the
Afar triple junction. for her contribution to an article in
Nature Geoscience: "A mantle magma reservoir beneath an incipient mid-ocean ridge in Afar, Ethiopia". The same year, Whaler was also interviewed for the
Royal Society of Edinburgh's 14th edition of Science Scotland and this was reported in an article entitled "Magnetic Field Personality". She has undertaken a number of sabbaticals at
NASA’s
Goddard Space Flight Center,
Harvard University, the
University of California at San Diego (where she was a Green Scholar),
Victoria University of Wellington, and
Göttingen University (as Gauss Professor), funded by the
Fulbright Foundation, NASA, the Cecil H and Ida M Green Foundation, and
Göttingen Academy of Sciences. ==Organisational roles==