Honours and awards
The BDA's Honours and Awards are designed to acknowledge the unsung heroes of our profession; those who uphold and improve the standards of dentistry.
Each year, our Honours and Awards celebrate those who have made a significant contribution to the BDA and/or the dental profession.
Who can be nominated?
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 four Awards (including nomination for the BDA's President), and each aims to honour service provided from different areas of dentistry - please ensure you look at the Awards' criteria before nominating.
How do I nominate someone?
The deadline for nominations is 31 May 2024. Download the nomination form.
Our nomination form is designed to help you show how your nominee has met the Awards criteria.
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. It is important to complete as many of the sections as is required in order to meet the criteria of each award.
Please read our help on completing the nomination form
Please note that we do not normally accept nominations from those not working in dentistry, or from members of the public – please get in touch to discuss this if necessary.
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 based on 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.
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 had long-standing membership that has been given up for reasons such as retirement.
It is 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 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 the information provided by the nominator and that which is available from the BDA’s membership database (e.g. Length of membership, previous honours or awards received).
Our Membership Team are happy to support nominators with relevant membership information about nominees, please email [email protected] or call 020 7563 4550.
The Chair of the Honours and Awards Committee, Roz McMullan [email protected], is also willing to advise on any proposed nomination.
Nominators are asked to fill in the nomination form electronically. Handwritten forms are not accepted.
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.
Any questions?
Please contact our Honours and Awards secretariat, Alison Magee: [email protected].