Bayarma Khabtagaeva is an Associate Professor at University of Naples L'Orientale since 2022 Previously, she was an Associate Professor at University of Szeged in Hungary (2002-2021) where she earned her PhD degree in 2007 (with summa cum laude) and habilitation degree in 2019. With Hungarian State Eötvös Fellowship she spent several months as Visiting Researcher at Center for East Asian Studies (Western Washington University, USA) in 2012 and 2014, and Institute for Asian and African Studies (University of Helsinki, Finland) in 2008. From 2018 to 2020 she was a holder of Humboldt Fellowship for experienced researchers at Free University Berlin. She also serves as a co-editor of the international journal "Journal of Eurasian linguistics" (Brill: Leiden & Boston) since 2022.

Her current research involves Mongolic, Turkic and Tungusic languages, language contact in Siberia, and documenting the disappearing languages of Siberia and China. Khabtagaeva has conducted fieldworks with Barguzin Ewenki people, the speakers of a Tungusic dialect in Buryatia in 2009 and some Mongolic and Tungusic people in Inner Mongolia in 2017.

She has authored three books on language contact in Siberia as "Mongolic elements in Tuvan" (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2009), "The Ewenki dialects of Buryatia and their relationship to Khamnigan Mongol" (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2017) and "Language Contact in Siberia: Turkic, Mongolic, and Tungusic Loanwords in Yeniseian" (Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2019). She is the co-author of the Buryat language coursebook for Hungarian students "Burját nyelvkönyv" (Szeged: University of Szeged, 2011).

Khabtagaeva received the Young Scientist Award (Herman József Fiatal Kutatói Díj) of the Institute for Linguistics (Hungarian Academy of Sciences) for international scientific and publishing activity in 2011.