Each year, our Honours and Awards celebrate those who have made a significant contribution to the BDA and/or the dental profession.
Who can nominate?
Many nominations are made through our branches and sections, committees, and other networks, but we encourage nominations from anyone who feels their nominee meets our criteria. Self-nominations are not permitted.
We particularly encourage nominations from academic, community, hospital, or armed forces dentists and we want to celebrate the diversity of our profession.
Awards criteria
The Honours and Awards are aimed at those who have provided outstanding merit and service to their profession. They are intended to recognise outstanding contributions from individuals of all ages, backgrounds and at any stage of their careers.
There are four types of Honours and five Awards (including nomination for the BDA's President), and each aims to honour service provided from different areas of dentistry - please ensure you take a look at the Awards' criteria before nominating.
How do I nominate someone?
Our nomination form is designed to help you show how your nominee has met the Awards criteria.
We do not normally accept nominations from those not working in dentistry, or from general members of the public – please get in touch to discuss this if necessary.
We know filling in the nomination form can be a process that takes some time, but we encourage you to think about the questions and to clearly demonstrate your nominee's meeting of the criteria on the form.
Please read our help on completing the nomination form.
If you need further support, please read the 'Level of information to provide' section below.
Younger dentists, who have shown outstanding dedication to their profession, can also be put forward for the Joy Harrild Award for young dentists.
Download the nomination form
(Edge browser users - please right-click the link and select 'Save link as' to download the form)
The deadline for the next round of nominations is 26 May 2023.
The Honours and Awards Committee only accepts one nomination form per nominee. This will usually be the first nomination received.
BDA Honours and Awards - Advice and guidance
Branch, section or group nomination
Nominations for honours and awards will be hugely strengthened if they receive support from the relevant, branch, section or group, particularly where the nomination is based on the members’ contribution to the branch, section or group. The BDA’s country councils and committees can also support nominations. We recognise that in some cases – for example, where the nomination is on the basis of the members’ scientific achievement – it is not necessary for the nomination to be supported by a BDA body. However, we do not accept self-nominations or nominations made by family members or friends.
BDA membership
Unless the honour or award is specifically open to individuals who are not BDA members or eligible for BDA membership, such as Honorary Membership and the Roll of Distinction, nominees are expected to be BDA members or to have membership of long-standing where they have given up membership due to, for example, retirement.
Level of information to provide
It is very important that nominations provide as much detail as possible about the nominee to help the Honours and Awards Committee make a fair decision. Nominators should not assume that the Committee will have existing knowledge of the nominee and so should provide comprehensive information about their career, contributions and achievements. Where the nominee is not aware of the nomination, we appreciate this can be difficult and so it is best to consult with a range of colleagues in order to put together as much information as you can.
BDA staff are happy to provide advice on nominations and will request further information where nominations are not detailed enough, but nominators should not expect that staff will undertake additional research. The Committee will only be presented with that information provided by the nominator and that which is available from the BDA’s membership database (eg. Length of membership, previous honours or awards received).
Our Membership Team are happy to support nominators with relevant membership information about nominees, please email membership@bda.org or call 020 7563 4550.
The Chair of the Honours and Awards Committee, Roz McMullan roz.mcmullan@bda.org, is also willing to advise on any proposed nomination.
Handwritten nominations and signing nomination forms
Handwritten nominations are discouraged. Nominators are asked to fill in the nomination form.
Signatures on nomination forms do not have to be handwritten; a typed ‘e-signature’ is perfectly acceptable. Scanning in nomination forms that have been hand-signed makes them difficult to process and this should be avoided where possible.
