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Professor

James McAuley


Current Appointments

Senior Research Scientist and Group Leader, NeuRA
Director, Centre for Pain IMPACT Professor, Faculty of Medicine and Health, UNSW Sydney Honorary Research Fellow, The George Institute for Global Health
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Professor James McAuley is a psychologist, Professor in the School of Health Sciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health at UNSW and Senior Research Scientist at NeuRA.

James completed his PhD at Brunel University, London (2003). After immigrating to Australia in 2004 he took up a postdoc at the University of Sydney and then at the George Institute for Global Health. In 2010 he moved to NeuRA where he set up the Centre for Pain IMPACT (Investigating Mechanisms of Pain to Advance Clinical Translation). In 2017 James was appointed as Associate Professor to the Exercise Physiology department at UNSW and in 2020 he was promoted to Professor.

James’ research combines experimental, clinical and translational methods to develop and test new interventions to manage low back pain. James has published >300 articles (Google Scholar, ORCID) and holds over >$30M in research funding. He is regularly invited to give talks at conferences and scientific meetings. James has supervised 25 PhD students and mentored 12 postdocs.

James is the chair of the back pain group of SPHERE MSK and is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) for the Australian and New Zealand Musculoskeletal Clinical Trials Network (ANZMUSC). In 2015 James founded the NSW network for pain PhD students/ECRs (SPRiNG).


Publications

2026 Jan

White Matter Structure in Complex Regional Pain Syndrome: A High Angular Resolution and Fixel‐Based Study

View full journal-article on https://doi.org/10.1002/ejp.70202

2025, 16 Dec

Efficacy and Safety of Bisphosphonates for Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

View full journal-article on https://doi.org/10.7326/ANNALS-25-03693

2025, 01 Dec

Are beliefs about low back pain associated with central sensitization inventory in patients with low back pain? A cross-sectional study

View full journal-article on https://app.dimensions.ai/details/publication/pub.1188957811

2025, 01 Dec

The smallest worthwhile effect on pain and function for rotator cuff repair surgery: a benefit-harm trade-off study

View full journal-article on https://app.dimensions.ai/details/publication/pub.1189661164

2025 Dec

Amputation for complex regional pain syndrome: A systematic review

View full journal-article on https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2025.105571

2025 Dec

Quality matters: Interpreting amputation outcomes in CRPS – Authors reply

View full journal-article on https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2025.106178

2025 Dec

The smallest worthwhile effects of strengthening exercise on pain intensity for people with knee osteoarthritis: a benefit-harm trade-off study

View full journal-article on https://app.dimensions.ai/details/publication/pub.1196080849

2025, 01 Oct

Improving reporting of observational studies of interventions: The TARGET guideline

View full journal-article on https://app.dimensions.ai/details/publication/pub.1193940860

2025, 01 Oct

Test-retest reliability and measurement error of the numerical rating scale and visual analogue scale in people with low back pain

View full journal-article on https://app.dimensions.ai/details/publication/pub.1191636222

2025, 01 Oct

“It’s just crucial to deal with emotions as well as the pain” A qualitative acceptability study of an online emotion regulation skills-focused intervention for people with chronic pain

View full journal-article on https://app.dimensions.ai/details/publication/pub.1193916583


James' research projects and related news

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