Iannis Kalifatidis was born and raised in Athens. After graduating from the German School of Athens (1982), he moved to Germany where he studied Mineralogy at the Technical University of Darmstadt and worked as a research assistant at the Joseph Beuys Block of the Hessian State Museum and at the Darmstadt Castle Museum. After returning to Athens, he completed his translation studies at EKEMEL in 2005 and has since worked as a freelance translator and editor of German-language literature. As a teacher of literary translation, he has taught courses at EKEMEL, at the Goethe-Institut of Athens, and at the language institute KOLLEG.