From 1987, Gruschke worked as a free-lance writer and picture-journalist with the main topics Tibet, Himalayas, Silk Road and East Asia. He held lectures and seminars at his hometown Freiburg and other places. After finishing his university studies, he went on numerous research trips to Southeast Asia, China, Korea, Central Asia, yet most of them led him to the highland of Tibet. From 2004 to 2012 he worked at Leipzig University, doing research on Tibetan pastoralists in eastern Tibet's Yushu area. From 2012, he was a guest professor at the Institute of Social Development and Western China Development Studies at Sichuan University, Chengdu, China. His main research interest was the livelihood security of the rural population, namely pastoralists, in China's Tibetan areas.