Lalage Jean Bown OBE FRSE FAcSS (23 May 1927 – 17 December 2021) was an English educator, feminist and women's literacy advocate.
She played an important role in establishing adult education and literacy programmes in the UK and in Africa.
[6][7] Bown returned to the United Kingdom in 1981 and became head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at the University of Glasgow.
[1] her 1973 book, Two Centuries of African English[8] features writing by Ignatius Sancho, Olaudah Equiano, Jomo Kenyatta, Julius Nyerere and Chinua Achebe.
One hopes that it will stimulate other Third World scholars to further develop their own adult education literatures based upon their own cultural systems.
[9] She was widely regarded as a leading speaker and representative of adult education in the UK and maintained a high profile internationally.
A collection of her clothes was donated to the Victoria and Albert Museum in response to the Africa Fashion call-out in 2022.
In April 2024, a one day conference in Bown's honour, entitled "Education for All: Challenging Orthodoxies and Fostering Inclusion", inspired by and exploring her work, took place at Somerville College, Oxford.