Biography

Dr Melikishvili was born in 1943 in Tbilisi, Georgia. She graduated from the Faculty of Orientalistics at the Tbilisi State University in 1965; in 2002 she defended the doctoral thesis. For many years she was a chief researcher and a member of the Scientific Council at the Javakhisvili Institute of History and Ethnology, as well as head of the Institute’s Department of Ethnology of the Caucasus and a supervisor of the Ethnic Conflict Research Group. The study of the polyethnic societies of Georgia’s border zones became one of the fundamental directions of her research. In 2000 she received the Order of Honor in appreciation of a ‘considerable personal contribution to research into problems of the socio- economical and cultural development of various ethnic groups residing in Georgia and in reward of her fruitful scientific and organisational activities’. She is married with two children.