Lalage Bown

The daughter of Dorothy Ethel Watson and Arthur Mervyn Bown, she was born in Croydon. She was educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in modern history and a MA from the University of Oxford where she studied at Somerville College. Bown also took post-graduate studied in adult education and economic development. She taught at the University of Edinburgh and then went to Ghana, where she taught at the University College of the Gold Coast in Ghana. Later she taught at Makerere University College in Uganda, the University of Ibadan and Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria, the University of Zambia and the University of Lagos. She played an important role in establishing adult education and literacy programs. In 1975, she was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Open University. Bown returned to the United Kingdom in 1981 and became head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at the University of Glasgow. In 2002, she received an honorary DLitt from the University of Glasgow.[1][2]

Bown was the first organizing secretary of the International Congress of Africanists. In 1973, she published Two Centuries of African English, which became an important resource for African universities.[2][1]

She received the William Pearson Tolley Award from Syracuse University in 1975, the first woman to receive that award.[2] She was named an Officer the Order of the British Empire in 1977. She was also named a fellow of the Educational Institute of Scotland.[3] Bown was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1991.[4]