Rate My Professor Lianne Wood

Lianne Wood is the Bateman Family Associate Professor of Peripheral Neuropathy in the Department of Public Health and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, at the University of Exeter, serving as Senior Research Fellow since January 2023. As a clinical academic advanced practice spinal physiotherapist with 13 years of experience, she has worked as an Advanced Spinal Practitioner in a large tertiary NHS trust handling emergency and routine clinics while maintaining a small clinical caseload. She completed her PhD at Keele University in June 2021, with a thesis on treatment targets and outcomes in persistent low back pain. Her research focuses on quantitative methods including prediction modelling, mediation analysis, and secondary analyses of randomised controlled trials; evidence synthesis such as realist reviews, systematic reviews, and meta-analyses; and qualitative methods. Current projects encompass the diagnostic utility of early symptoms in degenerative cervical myelopathy, barriers and facilitators to diagnosis, prehabilitation for degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis surgery, and mechanisms of exercise in low back pain outcomes.

Wood holds the NIHR School for Primary Care Research Post-doctoral Fellowship and previously the Orthopaedic Research UK post-doctoral Early Career Research Fellowship. She leads a Programme Development Grant and supervises PhD studentships on inflammatory peripheral neuropathy impacts and management. Notable publications include 'A systematic review and meta-analysis of pain neuroscience education for chronic low back pain: Short- and long-term outcomes of pain and disability' (European Journal of Pain, 2019), 'Pain catastrophising and kinesiophobia mediate pain and physical function improvements with Pilates exercise in chronic low back pain: a mediation analysis' (Journal of Physiotherapy, 2023), 'The value of clinical signs in the diagnosis of degenerative cervical myelopathy - a systematic review and meta-analysis' (Global Spine Journal, 2024), and 'Exercise interventions for persistent non-specific low back pain – does matching outcomes to treatment targets make a difference? A systematic review and meta-analysis' (The Journal of Pain, 2021). She contributes to teaching on the MSc in Extreme Medicine, focusing on literature reviews.