She spent her childhood in the Netherlands, and then returned to Greece to finish high school and attend college.
She earned a DDS in 1982, an MA in Anthropology in 1986 from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and a PhD in Linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1991.
[6] Additionally, she has examined the syntax-semantics interface of relative clauses in the Uto-Aztecan languages of Hiaki (Yaqui) and O'odham (Papago).
[7] In 1994 and 1997 Iatridou received the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award.
[9][10] In 2016, The University of Crete's Department of Philology awarded an honorary doctorate to Iatridou.