Mr Harrison Hansford

Dr Harrison Hansford (PhD, BSc(Hons), BExPhys) is a Research Fellow in the School of Population Health in the Faculty of Medicine and Health at UNSW and Centre for Pain IMPACT at Neuroscience Research Australia. He a clinician-researcher with a focus on using the best available methods to improve decision-making for musculoskeletal conditions such as low back pain. Themes of his research include precision medicine, causal inference from observational data and clinical trials. Harrison also conducts methodological work that aims to improve research transparency and openness; he led the development of international consensus-based reporting guidelines for observational studies emulating a target trial (TARGET), co-published in JAMA and the BMJ (2025), now recommended in the regulatory and journal policies. To conduct his research, he regularly collaborates with leading researchers at top universities including Harvard University.

Harrison is nationally recognised as an emerging leader in causal inference and his work has been cited over 1100 times. He has received six awards for his research, including the 2023 Journal of Physiotherapy Paper of the Year, the 2023 UNSW School of Health Sciences Higher Degree Research Candidate of the Year and the 2024 NeuRA Research Quality Award. He is inaugural Co-Chair of the Australian Pain Society Early- and Mid-Career Network and is treasurer of the International Association for the Study of Pain Early Career Network. He co-supervises one PhD candidate and has mentored five Honours students and six undergraduate research interns.