A special BSA award has been given to Jayne Egerton and Laurie Taylor for their BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed.

The Award for Services to Public Sociology was given to Jayne, the programme’s producer, at the annual conference by Professor Stevi Jackson, a BSA trustee.

Professor Jackson said the award was given “in recognition of the great service they have done for public sociology and in recognition of the excellent relationship we have had with the programme over the years.

“This is the only sociological discussion programme that goes out over the airwaves in the UK. It’s fantastic to have a space in which a sociologist can talk to a much wider constituency.”

In a statement read by Jayne, Laurie Taylor said he was “delighted that the BSA has recognised the contribution that Thinking Allowed has made to the public knowledge and understanding of sociology.

“The programme is now in its 21st year and during that lengthy period on air has provided an opportunity to more than a thousand UK-based sociologists to describe their research to an audience of well over a million listeners.

“I’m particularly pleased that the award is being collected today by my producer Jayne Egerton, whose production skills and sociological imagination have done so much in recent years to make the programme both topical and accessible.”

Jayne said that the award was a “tremendous honour and privilege”.

• Thinking Allowed and the BSA co-sponsored an annual Ethnography Award from 2014-2018, which gave a prize to an ethnographic study annually.