Rate My Professor Mark Hancock

Professor Mark Hancock is a Professor of Physiotherapy in the Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences at Macquarie University, where he serves in the School of Health Sciences. Possessing over 20 years of clinical experience as a musculoskeletal physiotherapist in primary care settings, he now focuses primarily on academic and research activities. Hancock earned his BAppSci(Phty), MAppSc, and PhD from the University of Sydney in 2007. He joined Macquarie University in 2012 as Associate Professor and has since been promoted to Professor. Prior to Macquarie, he was employed at the University of Sydney and holds an ongoing Honorary Fellow position at The George Institute for Global Health. His research centers on the diagnosis and management of back pain, with specific interests in low back pain, imaging for low back pain, prevention of chronic low back pain episodes, and interventions for musculoskeletal pain. As a key figure in the Spinal Pain Research Centre, he has led projects on prevention strategies, implementation of interventions, and clinical outcomes.

Hancock has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers in leading journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet, BMJ, Spine, and Journal of Physiotherapy. His contributions include recent works such as 'Development of an internationally agreed national minimum dataset for low back pain: a modified Delphi study' (2026, The Spine Journal), 'How robust is the evidence for prehabilitation in cancer surgery? A systematic review and fragility index analysis' (2026, Annals of Surgical Oncology), and studies on walking interventions for back pain and cognitive functional therapy for chronic low back pain, which have received wide media attention. He has secured over $11 million in research funding and his work boasts thousands of citations, underscoring its influence on clinical practice and policy. Hancock contributes to the field through editorial roles as a member of the associate editorial board for the Cochrane Back Review Group and a board member for the Journal of Physiotherapy.