Dr Benjamin Ellis and Professor Paul Emery are named in the 2024 New Year Honours list

Versus Arthritis are delighted to announce that two of our esteemed colleagues have been named in the 2024 New Year Honours list.

Dr Benjamin Ellis, a founding trustee of KeshetUK, the Jewish charity “with a vision of the world where no-one is forced to choose between their Jewish and LGBT+ identity”, has been made MBE for his services to healthcare, equality and the Jewish community. Brought up in Leeds, he is a rheumatologist and clinical director for outpatient transformation at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust in London and also works as senior clinical policy adviser to a national non-profit, Versus Arthritis. He studied for two years at Yeshivat Har Etzion before completing degrees at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, University College London, and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Benjamin said: “It’s wonderful to receive this honour, and it makes me think what a huge privilege it has been to work with amazing colleagues and friends, contributing where I feel particularly passionate. I'm especially proud of my role in making the Jewish communities in the UK and beyond a better place for LGBT+ people like me; and in raising awareness about the experiences of people living with chronic pain and arthritis, the impact these have on those affected and on wider society, and the need for more to be done to support people who live with these conditions."

Professor Paul Emery, whose research on early intervention in inflammatory arthritis has been adopted around the world, has been awarded a CBE for services to rheumatology.

Alongside his student teaching and supervision roles in the Faculty of Medicine and Health, he is Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology at the University’s Leeds Institute of Rheumatic and Musculoskeletal Disease, and director of the NIHR Leeds Biomedical Research Centre.

Professor Emery was President of EULAR 2009-2011, the European Society for Rheumatology, the first UK President for 25 years. He has served on the editorial boards of all the major rheumatology journals. He was inaugural President of ISEMIR (International extremity MRI society). He has been an NIHR Senior Investigator since 2008. He is a recipient of the Roche Biennial Award for Clinical Rheumatology; the Rheumatology Hospital Doctor of the Year award 1999; and EULAR prize 2002 for outstanding contribution to rheumatology research. In 2012 he was awarded the Carol Nachman Prize, the top international prize for rheumatology. In 2018 he was made Master of the American College of Rheumatology and was awarded an OBE by the Queen for services to Rheumatology.