He earned an MA (Class 1 Honours) in Anthropology in 1934 from Sydney University, for which he did extensive field research in the Daly River region of Northern Australia. A. P. Elkin judged Stanner's 1934 thesis on culture-contact at the Daly River as "a work of outstanding quality". Stanner criticised the popular assumption that the main function of the anthropologist was "the naive search for uncontaminated aboriginal cultures". He presented an exposition of a method for studying contact and cultural change, insisting that this was "an important and neglected problem". Barwick, Beckett and Reay wrote in 1985 that already his lifelong concern with the practical value of anthropology to Aboriginal welfare was apparent. Stanner lectured part-time at Sydney University and was the news editor at the World under Sydney newspaperman G. W. 'George' Warnecke.