Gyatso is known for her work on Tibet, primarily through text analysis and has focused on the twelfth to eighteenth centuries, examining the introduction of Buddhism to Tibet and its eventual status as mainstream in Tibet. Her first monograph explored the writing of autobiography in Tibet, and translated and analysed one of its most beautiful examples, the visionary journals of 'Jigs med gling pa (Apparitions of the Self, Princeton, 1998). Her more recent book, Being Human in a Buddhist World, studied the relationship between Buddhism and medicine in early modern Tibet. Her work has been credited by Barbara Gerke as helping to develop our understanding of the relationship between science and religion in early modern Tibetan culture.
