Gazmend Kapllani was born in Lushnjë, Albania on August 1, 1967. The Kapllani family has been forced from their land and resettled by the Communist regime of Enver Hohxa. In 1991, as the popular movement against the communist regime started gathering momentum in Albania, Kapllani led a political rally in Lushnjë. After that, he had to hide from the secret police, and eventually escaped to Greece. Kapllani settled in Athens, where he graduated from National and Kapodistrian University of Athens with a BA in Philosophy, and earned his PhD in Political Science and History from Panteion University, Athens, with a thesis on the image of Albanians in the Greek press, and of Greeks in the Albanian press. In 2005-2010 he taught undergraduate and graduate classes in history and culture of Albania at the Panteion University, Athens. In 2015, after living in Greece for 24 years, Kapllani announced that he decided to permanently leave the country, citing systematic harassment by the rogue elements in the Greek police, threats from neo-fascist groups, and the refusal of the Greek authorities to respond to his application for Greek citizenship, filed in 2008. In the US, Kapllani was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and taught at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. He now teaches at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois.
