I am Lead for the Manchester Centre for Musculoskeletal Research and Deputy Head of the Division of Musculoskeletal and Dermatological Sciences.

I am a Professor of Epidemiology in the Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis, part of the Centre for Musculoskeletal Research and a Consultant Rheumatologist in the Kellgren Centre for Rheumatology at Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

I am a clinical epidemiologist and my main research interests are understanding the short and longterm outcomes in adult and childhood inflammatory arthritis, including a greater understanding of the role treatments play in these outcomes.

I completed my Bachelors of Science and medical degree at the University of Manitoba in Canada. This was followed by training in internal medicine in Winnipeg, Canada and a fellowship in rheumatology at the University of Toronto. I subsequently worked as an Arthritis Society of Canada/CIHR Research Fellow at the then Arthritis Research UK Epidemiology Unit in Manchester, being awarded my PhD in 2005. I joined this unit as a Senior Lecturer in 2006 and  I am now  Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Manchester, set in the Versus Arthritis Centre for Epidemiology, and an Honorary Rheumatology Consultant at Manchester University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, UK.

My main research interests centre on outcomes in inflammatory arthritis, with a particular focus on pharmacoepidemiology. I am the national Chief investigator for the British Society for Rheumatology Biologics Register (BSRBR), which is prospectively collecting information on >30000 patients receiving biologic therapies and JAK inhibitors for rheumatoid arthritis throughout the United Kingdom. Work from this project has assessed the real-world effectiveness of anti-TNF agents and other biologics for rheumatoid arthritis as well as predictors of response and the risk of adverse events, including infection, malignancy and myocardial infarction.

My research in juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) includes the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study (CAPS), an inception cohort which is studying both short and long-term outcomes in children diagnosed in the UK with JIA and The UK JIA Biologics and Targeted Therapies Register consisting of 2 studies in children with JIA: the Versus Arthritis funded Safety and Effectiveness of Biologics in Children (BCRD) and the BSPAR Etanercept Register. I also co-lead the MRC Stratified Medicine Consortium for JIA called CLUSTER with Professor Lucy Wedderburn (Homepage - CLUSTER Consortium).

 I supervise a number of PhD and Masters students working on these and related projects.

More recently, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, I co-led the EULAR COVID-19 Registry, part of the CV-19 Global Rheumatology Alliance. I was also a member of the MHRA COVID-19 Vaccines Benefit Risk Expert Working Group.

• British Medical Association (BMA)
• British Society for Rheumatology (BSR)
• American College of Rheumatology (ACR)
• Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada (RCPSC)
• Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh)
• Association of Physicians of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
• Paediatric Rheumatology European Society (PRES)

• Bachelor of Science (1992) - University of Manitoba, Canada
• MD (1996) - University of Manitoba, Canada
• Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada (General Medicine and Rheumatology) (2000)
• PhD (2005) - University of Manchester, UK
• Associate Member - Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (2005)

• Supervision of higher level degress (MRes, MSc and PhD)
• Manchester Medical School - Academic Advisor, Project Supervisor

Epidemiology and biostatistics including analysis of longterm observational cohort studies.