Assoc. Prof. Olsi Lelaj is a scholar of the anthropology of modernity in the Department of Ethnology at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Art Studies, Tirana, and co-founder of the Center for Social and Cultural Anthropology Studies. He has been the head of the Department of Ethnology since September 2017.  

Lelaj's research touches on topics such as class formation and the role of the modern state, ethnographic knowledge in dictatorship, modern ideologies and intellectuals, and post-communist urban spaces.  Over the years, he has carried field research in Albania, Kosovo, Greece and Italy. 

He is the author of “Nën Shenjën e Modernitetit: Antropologji e proçeseve proletarizuese gjatë socializmit shtetëror në Shqipëri” [Under the Sign of Modernity: Anthropology of Proletarianization during State Socialism in Albania] (2015) and co-author (with Prof. Dr. Nebi Bardhoshi) of “Etnografi në Diktaturë: Dija, pushteti dhe holokausti ynë” [Ethnography in Dictatorship: Knowledge, Power, and Our Holocaust] (2018). 

Lelaj is also the co-editor of the special issue of Urbanities titled “The Dreams and Nightmares of City Development: Urban Planning, Ideologies, and Social movements in Contemporary Cities” (2017). His articles have been published in various national and international journals. 

Lelaj has been teaching anthropology in many public and private universities in Albania. He is visiting professor at the Department of Design and Architectural, Territorial, Enviromental Techonologies (PDTA)-University of Sapienza, Rome. He currently teaches urban anthropology at the Department of Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and Urbanism, Polytechnic University of Tirana.