British Sleep Society History


British Sleep Society - Committee and Meetings - 1989-1999

Founding Members
Chris Alford, Neil Douglas, Chris Hanning, Jim Horne, Chris Idzikowski, David Parkes and Colin Shapiro.

1st Annual Meeting Sept 4-5 1989, Edinburgh University, Edinburgh
Chairmen N Douglas and C Shapiro
Chairman-elect I Hindmarch
Hon Secretary CD Hanning
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski
Committee Members: C Alford, N Douglas , J Horne and D Parkes
Conference organisers: N Douglas and C Shapiro
Satellite symposium: C Idzikowski

2nd Annual Meeting Sept 24-26 1990, Leeds University, Leeds
Chairman I Hindmarch
Chairman-elect J Stradling
Hon Secretary CD Hanning
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski
Committee Members: C Alford, N Douglas , J Horne and D Parkes
Conference organiser: I Hindmarch

3rd Annual Meeting Sept 1-3 1991, Oxford
Chairman J Stradling
Chairman-elect CD Hanning
Hon Secretary CD Hanning
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski
Committee Members: C Alford, N Douglas, J Horne, D Parkes and G Stores
Conference organisers: J Stradling and D Roberts

4th Annual Meeting Sept 14-16 1992, Leicester University, Leicester
Chairman CD Hanning
Chairman-elect W McNicholas
Hon Secretary CD Hanning
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski
Committee Members: C Alford, N Douglas, J Horne, D Parkes and G Stores
Conference organisers: CD Hanning

5th Annual Meeting Sept 12-14 1993, Trinity College, Dublin
Chairman W McNicholas
Hon Secretary C Alford
Co-Chairman (co-opted) & Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski
Committee Members: P Calverley, C Hanning, J Horne, K Hume, G Stores and J Stradling
Publicity Officer: R James
Therapeutics and management sub-committee chairman C Idzikowski
Conference organisers: W McNicholas and C Idzikowski

6th Annual Meeting Sept 4-7 1994, UWE, Bristol
Chairman W McNicholas
Chairman-elect
Hon Secretary C Alford
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski (co-opted)
Committee Members: P Calverley, K Hume, G Stores and S Wilson
Publicity Officer: R James
Therapeutics and management sub-committee chairman C Idzikowski
Conference organiser: C Alford

7th Annual Meeting Sept 6-8 1995, St Georges' Hospital Medical School, London
Chairman W McNicholas
Chairman-elect
Hon Secretary C Alford
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski (co-opted)
Committee Members: P Calverley, K Hume, G Stores and S Wilson
Publicity Officer: R James
Therapeutics and management sub-committee chairman C Idzikowski
Conference organisers: A Crisp, Guz, P Hill, C Idzikowski, D Parkes

8th Annual Meeting Dec 17 1996, Royal Society of Medicine, London
Chairman C. Idzikowski
Chairman-elect P Calverley
Hon Secretary K Hume
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski (acting)
Committee Members: N Douglas, P Sedgwick, G Stores and S Wilson
Society Administrator J Jones
Conference organisers: C Idzikowski J Jones

9th Annual Meeting Oct 1997, Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh
Chairman C. Idzikowski
Chairman-elect P Calverley
Hon Secretary K Hume
Hon Treasurer C Idzikowski (acting)
Committee Members: N Douglas, P Sedgwick, G Stores and S Wilson
Society Administrator J Jones
Conference organiser: N Douglas

10th Annual Meeting Oct 20 1998, Liverpool Medical Institution
Chairman P Calverley
Committee Members: N Douglas, C Idzikowski, M King, P Sedgwick, G Stores and S Wilson

11th Annual Meeting 16-17 Sept 1999, St Hugh's College, Oxford


DOH & BSS funded Medical Student Education Survey
Stores, G. & Crawford, F. Medical Student Education in sleep and its disorders. Journal of Royal College of Physicians of London, 32, (2), 149-153, 1998.


September 16-17, 1999 Oxford Meeting Report
The BSS Annual Scientific Meeting in Oxford this September proved to be another successful blend of interesting presentations interrupted every so often by opportunities to over-indulge with food and drink! As well as many high-quality speakers from the UK, this year’s conference was able to include speakers from Switzerland, Italy, Israel, USA and Canada, thanks to the generous sponsorship from Oxford Instruments (Medical Systems Division) and the support of the other exhibitors in the trade exhibition.

The theme of the main presentations was that of the developmental aspects of sleep and its disorders. This included coverage of aspects of sleeplessness, sleep related breathing disorders, and arousals and arousal disorders. The developmental theme was (with a bit of imagination!) reflected in the technology and assessment session which was devoted to the comparative `child’ of sleep assessment techniques, artificial neural networks.

Guest speaker, Prof Irene Tobler, gave an inspiring and humorous autobiographical account of her personal development within the field of sleep research. Those of us who ever considered sleep research with humans to be problematic were forced to reconsider when told of the difficulties involved with retrieving actigraphs from goats roaming over the Alps!

The free communications and poster sessions were lively and varied, emphasising the diversity of the interests of BSS members and the amount of interesting sleep research that is being carried out in this country.

Special mention must also be made of Professor David Grahame-Smith who provided a splendid after dinner speech at the Conference Banquet. He must be heartily congratulated for managing to include a joke with mention of CPAP in the punch-line!

Finally, thanks must be given to the following companies who supported the meeting:
Ambulatory Monitoring Inc., Blackwell Science Ltd., Cambridge Neurotechnology Ltd, Cephalon UK Ltd., Lorex Synthelabo Ltd., Medic-Aid Ltd., Outside-In Ltd, Oxford Instruments, Pharma Nord (UK) Ltd., ResMed (UK) Ltd., Sleep Multimedia Inc. and Stowood Scientific Instruments.

Study Day
The first study day for sleep laboratory workers was held on 29th April 1999 in Stevenage, Herts.  It was a tremendous success and is likely to become an established part of BSS's programme of events. The next study day is tentatively sceduled for April 2000. Contact the Hon Sec if you would like further notification or details of this meeting.

Luci Wiggs


The original url of the British Sleep Society was www.british-sleep-society-org.uk. This was changed to www.sleeping.org.uk around 2001. The pages on the www.neuronic.com site which hosted the British Sleep Society pages in the early years were referred to by the original url.

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