I am a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (2020-2022). I lead a program of research on methods for evidence synthesis. This program builds on the research undertaken during my PhD (2011-2015) and NHMRC Early Career Fellowship (2015-2019). I was a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bristol, UK, from 2015-2017.

My research aims to improve the credibility of syntheses of health and medical research. I have led many studies investigating the transparency, reproducibility and risk of bias in systematic reviews and the studies they include, and have developed methods to address these issues. I co-led the 2020 update of the PRISMA statement for systematic reviews, and was an associate scientific editor for the 2019 edition of the Cochrane Handbook for Systematic Reviews of Interventions. I was a member of the core group who developed the RoB 2 tool for assessing risk of bias in randomized trials and co-led the development of a new tool for assessing Risk Of Bias due to Missing Evidence in a synthesis (ROB-ME). I have collaborated on many systematic reviews and meta-analyses evaluating the effects of various interventions for a range of health conditions, including manual therapy and exercise for shoulder pain, splinting for carpal tunnel syndrome, drug and non-drug therapies for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and testosterone replacement therapy for sexual wellbeing; this applied work often informs my research agenda.

My expertise has been recognized in leadership and editorial appointments at organizations and journals focusing on methods for evidence synthesis, including co-convenor of the Cochrane Bias Methods Group, and member of the editorial board for the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology.

I welcome inquiries from prospective Honours, Masters and PhD students interested in supervision and collaboration. You can reach me on Twitter @mjpages