Elisabeth Gerdts-Rupp meanwhile embarked on a new academic career in 1925, attending lectures at the University of Tübingen on Ethnology and Geography. She was taught by Augustin Krämer. Her studies led to the award of a second doctorate, this time awarded by the University of Tübingen, in 1934. Her work concerned the pre-conquest lives of Arauca people of what became part of Chile. The work involved her in close study of Spanish-language sources archived in Seville and in Argentina. In the introduction to her dissertation she expressed regret that she had been unable to afford to study Chilean archives as well. Because she was able to work only with Spanish language sources her work naturally saw the customs and practices of the Araucans through the prism of records compiled by their Spanish conquerors. The work was extensively reworked and published for a wider readership by the (then) Hamburg-based Ibero-American Institute, under the title "Magische Vorstellungen und Bräuche der Araukaner im Spiegel spanischer Quellen seit der Conquista." ("loosely, "The magical concepts and customs of the Araucans as reflected in post-conquest Spanish sources"". Subsequent scholars have criticised an apparent focus on the “magical understandings” and "magical customs" of the people, giving rise to the judgment that the work has become "completely outdated". Presumably that is not how it would have been perceived in 1937, however, and it seems to have assured her acceptance in academic quarters as a competent, if in some respects unconventional, ethnologist. During the later 1930s Gerdts-Rupp also undertook study trips in North Africa, South America and the Near East.