Dr. Ilia Zhulati was born in 1947 in Grabovë, Përmet, Albania. He studied English and linguistics at the University of Tirana, earning a master's in contrastive linguistics. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1982, serving as a diplomat for the Albanian Mission to the United Nations in New York from 1983 to 1987. After communism's fall, he pursued doctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, University of Sorbonne, Paris, and University of Aarhus, Denmark. In 1999, he received "Doctor of Sciences" from Albania's Higher Commission.