award winning
meet the team
JOANNE STEVENSON
President
Joanne Stevenson, originally from Manchester, has dedicated 30 years to her career as a prosthetics technician. She has been a member of the DTA since her student days.
Joanne pursued her studies at Manchester Metropolitan University while working part-time in labs in Manchester and Oldham. She qualified in 1995 with a BTEC National Diploma. In 1996, Joanne moved to Belfast and has been working at her current lab since 2007. Her expertise includes working on prosthetics such as Valplast flexible dentures, hybrid implant bars, and implant-retained overdentures. Recently, she has started visiting surgeries for All on 4 denture to bridge conversions.
Joanne is the first person to obtain the new DTA Fellowship and has served as the deputy president of the DTA from 2022 to 2025. She is now the newly elected president.
CHRIS FIELDING
Deputy President
Chris began his career working in a commercial dental laboratory in 1986 where he progressed to department manager. Chris moved across to teaching full time and gained a Master's Degree in Education in 2004. He presently works as the Higher Education Programme Leader for Dental Technology at The City of Liverpool College. During this period, he has worked in association with other providers to develop Btec and Foundation Degree programmes. Chris has also held various roles with the GDC, as an Educational Associate and DCP Assessor.
TONY GRIFFIN
Treasurer
Tony is based in the East Midlands. He is now a self-employed business consultant having spent much of his career in the education sector providing and developing dental technology qualifications. He qualified in Nottingham and has City & Guilds Intermediate, Final and Advanced certificate, a Degree in Business studies and other qualifications e.g. QA assurance.
He has worked in the private, public and voluntary sectors in a variety of roles and has previously held positions as: Faculty Director of Health Sciences, Trustee to two charities, a management role in a voluntary organisation; Quality Reviewer for Pearson PLC; FtP panel member and currently provides various business development support in the private sector.
Tony was named a Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2014 Queen's Birthday Honours in recognition of his services to Dental Technology.
As well as being the DTA Treasurer, he is the political portfolio holder for the Association and a member of the Editorial Panel.
DELROY REEVES
DTA Liaison Delegate
Delroy is based in London where he runs a private dental laboratory. He gained his City and Guilds Final and Advanced BTEC at South London College in 1983 and 1986 respectively. Delroy has been in dental technology for around 40 years, it all started in Jamaica where he worked in a men's store below a dental practice with a lab on it's premise, on his lunch breaks he would go up to the lab out of interest and observe the technicians at work, and occasionally was asked to assist. A year and a half later, the dental technician told Delroy he was leaving and had chose him to be his successor.
ROBERT LEGGETT
Council Members
Robert is a qualified dental technician and clinical dental technician, based in Scotland where he is a director of New Life Teeth, Scottish Denture Clinic. He has a wealth of experience in the profession having 20 years' experience as a dental technician and 10 years as a clinical dental technician.
PATRICIA MACRORY
Council Member
Patricia qualified as a dental nurse in 1999 before deciding she wanted to be a dental technician. She qualified as a dental technician in 2005 at the School of Dentistry, Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
After qualifying she worked in the prosthesis department in a commercial dental lab for 6 years She then transferred to the orthodontic department within that lab and has worked in orthodontics since. She is currently the lab manager of a busy in house orthodontic lab at Kennedy orthodontics.
She is also the mother of 2 active teenage daughters. In her spare time she enjoy running and helping out with her daughters football team.
JADE RITCH
Council Member
Jade grew up in the remote Scottish Isles of Orkney where she qualified as a Dental Nurse. After five years specialising in Implant/ Surgical nursing, she noted the lack of lab provisions and sought opportunities on the mainland to further her knowledge. In 2016 she began training as a technician, and later qualified from the University of Aberdeen.
Jade is the Prosthetics Manager of SDC Lab, which is a leading digital Dental Lab in Edinburgh. She is passionate about CAD/CAM in Dental Technology, especially the exciting advancements of Digital Dentures.
Jade still enjoys travelling back to Orkney to spend time on the family farm and can see a rural lab in her future.
James Green
Council Member
James Green is a Maxillofacial and Dental Laboratory Manager for Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) in London and Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.
James trained at Barts and the London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry, and Lambeth College, London, and qualified as a dental technician in 2001. This was followed by a vocational training year at the Royal London Hospital and two years based at the Eastman Dental Hospital, University College London Hospitals NHS Trust, before transferring to GOSH in 2004.
He developed the auricular splint, a custom-made medical device that maintains projection and dimensions following auricular reconstruction (which was published in the Annals of Plastic Surgery) and an obturator prosthesis for children with teeth that cannot accommodate clasps due to insufficient eruption (published in the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry).
James has delivered more than 50 invited lectures, both nationally and internationally, and authored or co-authored more than 25 peer-reviewed journal articles.
His awards include the British Orthodontic Society Technicians Award (2002) and the British Orthodontic Society Award to an Orthodontic Technician for Distinguished Service (2024).
James first joined the DTA council in 2008 and served as Deputy President from 2014 to 2016 and President 2016 to 2018. He is also a council member for the Orthodontic Technicians Association, where he served as Treasurer between 2007 and 2016 and Secretary since 2018.
Jo Clark
Council Member
Joanne is a prosethics technician working in and running her family owned dental lab in east London, alongside her brother.
Joanne initially joined her family in the lab in 2003 in an admin role before studying to become a dental tech herself, completing a BTEC in dental technology at Lambeth college in 2017.
Joanne now splits her time between hands on prosthetic work and overseeing the smooth running of the lab as a whole.
Raya Karaganeva
Council Member
Raya is a Lecturer in Dental Technology at the Queens Dental Sciences Centre, University of Greater Manchester. She qualified as a dental technician in 2015 at Manchester Metropolitan University, where she went on to complete a PhD in 2019. Her doctoral research focused on the effects of custom-made mouthguards on retention, comfort, and physiological responses during exercise. Since then, she has had a primary interest in Sports Dentistry and has worked closely with Dental Trauma UK and the Dental Technologists Association to disseminate knowledge and raise awareness of custom-made mouthguards. Raya has previously delivered CPD seminars for Health Education England and has presented as invited speaker at national and international conferences. Currently, she is involved in research projects, which aim to investigate contemporary developments in dental materials and is open for collaboration.
Daniel Bant
Student Representative
Dan originally started out in the construction industry on leaving school and qualified as a bricklayer before studying project management at Leeds Met.
Dan travelled Australia and South East Asia for a year after university before working as a project manager for 7 years. then joined the family business (which he's been at now for around 2 and a half years) and is now Digital laboratory manager. He started his FdSc Dental Technology course at Cardiff Met last year.
Industry wise Dan has an interest in following the digital side of things and how it keeps moving forward, and working in a highly digital lab he is always looking at how we can improve our workflows with even more digital input.
REBECCA KINAHAN
Ops Co-ordinator
Rebecca and her team at Ciriaco have been delivering membership support and office management to the DTA since 2019. Through her business, Rebecca offers business support and event management to clients across various sectors.
Rebecca has a BA Honours Degree in Business Management and Event Management from the University of Gloucestershire. After finishing university and before settling into a career, Rebecca took time out to see the world and spent time working in Australia and travelling around New Zealand, Asia & Malaysia but is now very settled in Cheltenham.
Rebecca has enjoyed a varied career in event management within a number of industries including charity, public, performance marketing, hospitality and now is being introduced to the dental profession. Most recently, Rebecca was Head of Events at WellChild - charity for sick children and has been responsible for organising a wide range of events from board meetings to industry wide global conferences; sporting tournaments to music, arts, food and drinks festivals; and intimate networking receptions to high profile award ceremonies for 1000 guests in a number of prestigious venues including Buckingham Palace, The Dorchester, Grosvenor House, BAFTA and The Magic Circle HQ.
Derek Pearson
TT/Articulate Editor
Derek has been owner and editor of online dental magazine dentalreview.news since 2015, before which he edited both Dental Practice journal and The Dental Technician. He has worked as a journalist and editorial contributor to a number of titles over the last few decades, including, more recently, a regular column for The Technologist.
He believes that getting the message right and presenting it in a clear and elegant way is at the heart of all good copywriting, and is thrilled to be working with the DTA; an association for which he has had great respect since first joining the The Dental Technician editorial team back in 2006.
Derek is also a published novelist and an illustrator.
Keith Winwood
Editorial Assistant
Keith is currently the programme leader at Manchester Metropolitan University for the joint MSc Clinical Science- Reconstructive Science course with Kings College London, a course which is part of the NHS Scientist Training Programmes. He is also a visiting Senior Lecturer at King's College London (Guy's Campus) for the Academic Centre of Reconstructive Science.
He previously studied at Manchester Metropolitan University, BSc (Hons) in Dental Technology specialising in prosthetics and maxillofacial units, graduating in 1999. After completion of his degree, he undertook his PhD examining the accumulation of elastic and plastic strains in cortical bone and the implication to implant loosening, at Cranfield University. He then worked on a collaborative project at the University of Reading with the University of to urs (France), University of Twente (Netherlands), and ForschungszentrumJuelich (Germany) as a post-doctoral researcher.
In 2004, he returned to Manchester Metropolitan University initially as a research fellow and then onwards to senior lecturer. His research interests are within musculoskeletal health, bone, and facial trauma specifically mouthguard protection. He has authored and co-authored over 40 peer reviewed journal papers, as well as presenting at a large number of national and international conferences. He has supervised a number of PhD students and currently has a number working within craniofacial science, dental materials and musculoskeletal research. Keith also reviews for international journals specifically for the European Journal of Applied Physiology, Journal of Dental Traumatology, and Journal of Dental Materials Research.
