Honorary Posthumous Fellowships awarded for the first time
30 May 2024

Introduced in February 2024 Honorary Posthumous Fellowships are awarded to  individuals who in the opinion of the Main Board have rendered in the past exceptional services to the Society, or MRS Members, or the Profession and were not nominated for Fellowship or Honorary Fellowship during their lifetime.

This year MRS is awarding Honorary Posthumous Fellowships to the following.

Dr Alan Branthwaite

Alan made an outstanding contribution to the development of qualitative market research both in the UK and Internationally. He wrote over 20 published papers on the subject of psychology and consumer understanding and ran training courses for both MRS and ESOMAR during a career that included being a Lecturer in the Psychology Department at Keele University, a founder Director of (CRAM) Cooper Research and Marketing, a Director of Millward Brown, Founder of Ignition Research and laterally Consultant Director of QRi Consulting.  Alan was also one of the original Chief Examiners for the original MRS Diploma.

He was a member of MRS for 28 years, joining in 1986 until 2014. His full obituary is available at Obituary: Dr Alan Branthwaite | News | Research Live (research-live.com).

Mel Crowther

Mel was a journalist who worked as Daily Research News Online’s News Editor for 17 years and was a well-known and highly respected driving force behind this publication.  

She was also a keen believer in women's rights in the workplace and elsewhere and did much to inspire other women in research. Her full obituary is available at https://www.mrweb.com/drno/news36068.htm.

Mike Trotman

Mike contributed for 17 years on the ASC Committee until his retirement due to poor health.  He was a judge on the ASC/MRS technology award for many years, custodian of the ASC website for over a decade, worked on the ASC’s TabsML working group and for several years was the ASC Secretary.

In his professional life, Mike was a highly respected technical specialist in the field of survey research and data. For example, Mike worked on the TabsML standard for exchanging aggregated data in XML between packages.

His full obituary is available at https://ascconference.org/mike-trotman-1954-2024/