Brian George Hewitt

Brian George Hewitt, FBA (born 11 November 1949) is an English academic linguist who is Emeritus Professor of Caucasian languages as the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas), University of London. He received his primary and secondary education in his hometown where he attended the former Doncaster Grammar School for boys (now called the Hall Cross Academy), which has been in existence since at least 1350. Here he focussed his studies on Latin, Ancient Greek, and ancient history, which he completed in 1968. for he soon became acquainted with Abkhazian post-graduate student Zaira Kiazimovna Khiba, whom he married on 25 June 1976 in Tbilisi, and with whom he has two daughters: Amra Shukia Hewitt and Gunda Amza-Natia Hewitt, each of whom has two children. In 1992, he became Reader in Caucasian languages there and finally a Professor in 1996.

During his academic career, he has been a member of the Board of Management of the Marjory Wardrop Fund in Oxford (since 1983); in 1985, he became a member of the editorial board of the French publication Revue des Etudes Géorgiennes et Caucasiennes which was published regularly until 1993. He was on the Editorial board of the journal Central Asia Survey (CAS) from 1993 to 2015 and has similarly served since 2015 on the board of Journal of Caucasian Studies (JOCAS).

From 1985 to 1990 he was a member of the Council of the Philological Society and from 1986 to 1990 became the first president of the Societas Caucasologica Europaea.

Though initially unpublished in Tbilisi, its content became known in Abkhazia, thanks to the posting in the centre of Abkhazia's capital, Sukhumi, of a Russian translation. It was only after the first fatal clashes between Georgians and Abkhazians in Sukhumi on 15–16 July

As a result of the events of the War in Abkhazia from 1992 to 1993, he became a supporter of independent Abkhazia and accepted an offer from Abkhazian leader Vladislav Ardzinba to serve as its Honorary Consul in the United Kingdom, The British Foreign Office was prevailed upon to request that he desist from calling himself honorary consul of a state that the British government does not recognize. However, when asked to cite the treaty or convention which prohibits British citizens from calling themselves whatever they wish, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office accepted that there exists no such prohibition and simply requested that he cease so styling himself.

Although he has written several important scholarly works on Abkhaz and has a good understanding of its grammar, he does not speak the language, though he does speak Georgian.

Works Lingua Descriptive Studies 2: Abkhaz, 1979 (with wife Zaira Khiba) Svan-English Dictionary, 1985, (editor and writer of the introduction) Typology of Subordination in Georgian and Abkhaz, Mouton de Gruyter, 1987 Indigenous Languages of the Caucasus 2: North West Caucasus, Caravan Books, 1989 (as editor and contributor) Caucasian Perspectives, Lincom Europa, 1992 (as editor and contributor) Subject, Voice and Ergativity: Selected Essays, SOAS, 1995 (as editor and contributor) Georgian: A Learner's Grammar, Routledge, 1995 Georgian: A Structural Reference Grammar of Georgian, Benjamins / SOAS Handbook of Oriental Languages, 1995 Central Asian Survey (volume 14.1, 1995; paper on pages 43–189 about the Caucasus) A Georgian Reader, SOAS, 1996 Abkhaz Newspaper Reader (with supplements), Dunwoody Press, Maryland, 1998 (with wife Zaira Khiba) The Abkhazians: A Handbook, Curzon Press, 1998 (as co-author) The Languages of the Caucasus: scope for study and survival (Inaugural Lecture), 1998 Central Asian Survey (vol. 22.4, 2003; paper on the all-day SOAS conference on Chechnya in November 2002, co-organized by Hewitt) Introduction to the Study of the Languages of the Caucasus, Lincom Europa, 2004 Abkhazian Folktales (with grammatical introduction, translation, notes and vocabulary), Lincom Europa, 2005 Pages from Abkhazian Folklore, Sukhumi, 2008 (with Zurab Dzhapua) Abkhaz: A Comprehensive Self-tutor, Lincom Europa, 2010 Discordant Neighbours. A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts, Brill, 2013 Various articles on Caucasian languages and politics in various encyclopaedias, Central Asian Survey, Bedi Kartlisa, Revue des Etudes Géorgiennes et Caucasiennes.