BSG Outstanding Achievement Award 2011

After much discussion, and in this our 40th anniversary year, the BSG Outstanding Achievement Award 2011 was presented at this year’s Annual Conference in Plymouth to three giants in the field of social gerontology: Professors Sara Arber, Chris Phillipson and Tony Warnes. All three of them are truly outstanding academics who are known globally. All three have contributed to British social gerontology in different but very important ways.

• Sara Arber is Co-founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Ageing and Gender at the University of Surrey. She has made numerous major scientific contributions on gender and informal care giving, health, pensions and, latterly, sleep in later life. Her research on gender and ageing with Jay Ginn is seminal and widely regarded as such. She currently leads a large NDA project on sleep. She was previously President of both the BSA and the ISA Research Committee on Ageing. Sara has also played a substantial role in training the next generation of researchers, with 39 PhD completions to her name. Hers is a remarkably deep and wide-ranging contribution.

• Chris Phillipson is founder and previous Director of the Centre for Social Gerontology at Keele University. He was President of the BSG from 2004-06. Chris has made major academic contributions across a wide front of gerontology: the social construction of ageing, retirement, older workers, urban ageing and critical gerontology. Unusually Chris has made significant contributions to both theoretical development and policy/practice applications in gerontology. He has generated a huge publication list of high quality outputs that shows no sign of waning. He has also been an active campaigner for older people’s rights for many years. This represents an enormous contribution to social gerontology in the UK and globally.

• Tony Warnes was instrumental in establishing both the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at King’s and the Sheffield Institute for Studies on Ageing. He has made a massive contribution to the BSG and wider gerontology, perhaps most importantly through his 23 year association with the journal Ageing and Society, during which time he orchestrated a huge increase in its productivity, a broadening of its content and an increased international profile. Tony is one of the founders of environmental gerontology and his 17 year collaboration with Maureen Crane has benefited some of the most deprived older people in the UK. He is a past President of the BSG, was influential in establishing the Averil Osborn Fund and has played a major role in raising the profile of social gerontology.
Our heartfelt congratulations go to all three of them as do our thanks for their continuing support of the Society.

In 2010  the BSG Outstanding Achievement Award was presented to Professor Anthea Tinker for her contribution to British Social Gerontology. Professor Tinker has undertaken a wide range of research in the field of social policy, specialising since 1974, in gerontology. She has carried out research on community care, a large number of national studies on housing for older people (including introducing assistive technology into older people's homes and remodelling sheltered housing and residential care homes to extra care), carers, information needs, technology/communication systems (including navigation aids, mobility of older people), older women, ethics, accidents and elder abuse. She is the author or co-author of 31 books and over 300 articles and book chapters. She has acted as Consultant to the WHO, OECD and the EU.

In 2009, the BSG Outstanding Achievement Aaward was presented to Tessa Harding MBE. The award ceremony took place during the annual  conference in September 2009 at the University of the West of England.

Professor Alan Walker said “Tessa Harding has made a major long term contribution to the empowerment of older people and ensuring that their individual and collective voices are heard by policy makers. She is a very worthy recipient of this award and truly reflects the outstanding contribution to gerontology that it is intended to honour.”

In 2008, the BSG Outstanding Achievement Award was presented to Baroness Sally Greengross by Alan Walker, chair of the judging panel, at the annual conference held at the University of West of England.

Sally was Director General of Age Concern England from 1987 to 2000 and was directly responsible for establishing the Age Concern Institute of Gerontology at Kings College, London and Eurolink Age – which has become AGE – Older People’s Platform in Europe. Whilst at Age Concern England, she established many innovative programmes including Age Resource, the Employer's Forumon Age, Ageing Well, Intergenerational Projects, the Exchange on Ageing, Law and Ethics (EAGLE) and the Debate of the Age. She also built up Age Concern Enterprises into a multi-million pound business.

Baroness Greengross is well known to all who work in the field of social gerontology, not only in the UK but internationally and particularly across the EU.