Jan Nattier did her undergraduate work in comparative religion (specializing in Buddhism) at Indiana University, where she also began graduate training in modern and classical Mongolian, Old Uighur, and classical Tibetan in the Department of Uralic and Altaic Studies. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University under the Committee on Inner Asian and Altaic Studies in 1988 with a dissertation in the field of classical Mongolian. After completing her doctorate her interests gradually shifted toward the transmission of Buddhism from India to China through Central Asia, and ultimately to...
