Former head of the Institute of Jamaica, Beverley Hall-Alleyne, dies

Beverley Hall-Alleyne, linguist and a former executive director of the Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), noted for work on African-Jamaican culture, has died. 

She died on Saturday at hospital. She was 78.

She served as head of the IOJ, Jamaica's premier cultural agency, from 1985 to 1993. 

Hall-Alleyne is also credited with influencing the research and publications of the African Caribbean Institute of Jamaica/Jamaica Memory Bank, a division of the IOJ that focuses on Afro-Jamaican and other ethnic cultural heritage. 

She served as a director of the institute from 1978 to 1985.

Two of her celebrated publications include Asante Kotoko: The Maroons of Jamaica, a 1982 publication that explores links between the Maroons and the Asante/Akan people, and Language Maintenance and Language Death in the Caribbean, which she did with her husband and pioneering Caribbean linguist Mervyn Alleyne. He died in 2016. 

Hall-Alleyne, who taught Spanish, Twi and Swahili, at The University of the West Indies (UWI), was also a former president of the Bolivarian Society of Jamaica. 

A graduate of The Queen's School in Jamaica, she studied linguistics and anthropology at The UWI and the University of California, Los Angeles in the United States. 

Hall-Alleyne's other contributions included being the director of human resources at Air Jamaica, the former national airline, and as Group Manager, Human Resources & Public Relations in the Massy Group.

Her tenure at the airline has been noted for its diversification of the workforce, mainly through the increased hiring of black Jamaicans.

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