06 February 2020
Update: After careful monitoring of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) situation, we have taken the difficult decision to cancel our annual conference. Read more here.
Coming to Annual Conference? Find out more about who we've got on the programme for #BSR20 in this series of mini-profiles.
Prof Karen Walker-Bone, Heberden Round
Karen trained as an academic rheumatologist with a special interest in occupational and MSK pain, funded by an Arthritis Research UK Clinical Research Fellowship. Karen is based at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Unit in Southampton, where she is Professor and Honorary Consultant in Occupational Rheumatology and Director of the MRC Versus Arthritis Centre for Musculoskeletal Health and Work.
She leads the multidisciplinary centre and coordinates a programme of work to find cost-effective ways to reduce the burden of disability for work caused by MSK disorders. She was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Faculty of Occupational Medicine in 2013. She also chairs the multi-disciplinary BSR/BHPR Special Interest Group in work and health.
Prof Costantino Pitzalis, Heberden Oration
Costantino is Versus Arthritis Professor of Rheumatology at the William Harvey Research Institute (WHRI), Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London. He is also Deputy Director of WHRI and Chair of the NIHR MSK Translational Research Collaboration (NIHR MSK TRC). He is Head of the Centre for Experimental Medicine and Rheumatology, leading a research team of approximately 50, and has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers in the field of inflammation, immunity and arthritis.
His research interests focus on the cellular and molecular mechanisms of inflammation and autoimmunity in chronic rheumatic conditions, particularly rheumatoid arthritis (RA). He is the Chief Investigator (CI) of a comprehensive biopsy-driven stratified-medicine randomised clinical trials (RCTs) programme funded by MRC/VA and NIHR.
Prof Anne-Maree Keenan OBE, Droitwich Lecture
Anne-Maree is Chair of Applied Health Research and Deputy Director of the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Leeds Biomedical Centre. After qualifying as a podiatrist in Melbourne, Anne-Maree worked in a variety of public and private sector podiatry positions, while also teaching at La Trobe University and then the University of Western Sydney. Anne-Maree moved to Leeds in 2002, where she was employed as a Research Fellow in the Academic Unit of Rheumatology at the University of Leeds and completed a PhD exploring the impact of quality of life in those with osteoarthritis.
Anne-Maree leads a successful portfolio of MSK research with a focus on foot pain and osteoarthritis. In 2019, Anne-Maree was appointed Associate Dean for the NIHR Academy, with oversight of research capacity development across NIHR infrastructure. Anne-Maree is also the Lead NIHR Advocate for podiatry and co-founder of the Leeds Female Leaders Network. She was awarded an OBE in the 2018 Queens Birthday Honours for her services to podiatry.
Prof Wendy Thomson, Barbara Ansell Address
Professor Wendy Thomson is a Genetic Epidemiologist who leads the JIA Genetics research programme within the Versus Arthritis Centre for Genetics and Genomics, University of Manchester, and is also the childhood arthritis lead within the MSK theme of the NIHR Manchester Biomedical Research Centre. She has an international track record in the field of MSK disease and genetic epidemiology and has published extensively in this field in relation to JIA.
She is CI for one of the largest longitudinal inception cohort studies of JIA in the world, the Childhood Arthritis Prospective Study (CAPS). She is also co-lead for the MRC/Versus Arthritis funded JIA stratified medicine consortium. Her current research focuses on understanding disease mechanisms as well as predicting prognosis and improving the outcome for children and young people with childhood onset arthritis.
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