Mary O’Keeffe is Professor of Allied Health at the University of Limerick. She is a physiotherapist and chronic pain researcher with a long-standing interest in improving care for people with low back pain and chronic musculoskeletal pain.

Her research focuses on developing and evaluating non-pharmacological interventions, communication strategies, and new models of care to improve outcomes for people with low back pain and chronic musculoskeletal pain. She is particularly interested in how care can be made more accessible, acceptable, and useful for people whose needs are not well met by current services.

She has held major European research funding, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and an ERC Starting Grant. Her current ERC-funded work focuses on personalised support for people with chronic musculoskeletal pain from socially disadvantaged groups. She also contributes to international research, policy, and education initiatives focused on improving pain care, reducing low-value care, and supporting evidence-based practice.

Mary is Professor of Allied Health in the School of Allied Health at the University of Limerick. She completed her physiotherapy training and PhD at the University of Limerick and has held research positions in Ireland, Australia, and Belgium.

Mary has published extensively in musculoskeletal pain, with more than 130 peer-reviewed publications in leading medical and specialist journals, including JAMA, The Lancet, JAMA Internal Medicine, the BMJ, British Journal of Sports Medicine, PAIN, and the European Journal of Pain. She has secured major national and European research funding, including a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship and an ERC Starting Grant.

Mary has received several awards for her research and communication work, including the 2019 Lisa Schwartz Prize for Communicating the Benefits and Harms of Medicine and the 2021 Wiser Healthcare Australia Early Career Researcher Award. She holds international research and leadership roles with organisations including the European Pain Federation EFIC and the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP).

Her policy-related work includes contributions to the Europe's Societal Impact of Pain (SIP) platform, European Parliament events, including invited speaking on pain prevention, and European position papers on pain and mental health, digital health for pain assessment and quality indicators, pain classification within ICD-11, multimodal chronic pain care, and the burden of pain in Europe.