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Contact Details

Phone
+64 21 279 7116
Email
murray.thomson@otago.ac.nz

University Links

Position
Researcher and Editor
Department
Dean's Office (Dentistry)
Qualifications
CNZM FRSNZ BSc BDS MA MComDent PhD
Research summary
Dental epidemiology, dental public health, health services research and scientific journal editing
Memberships
  • International Association for Dental Research (including the Geriatric Oral Research Group, the Behavioural, Epidemiology and Health Services Research Group, and the Global Oral Health Inequalities Research Network)
  • New Zealand Association of Gerontology
  • New Zealand Society for Hospital and Community Dentistry
  • Health Coalition Aotearoa
  • New Zealand Dental Association
  • Royal Society of New Zealand
  • Fellow of the International College of Dentists
  • Fellow of the Academy of Dentistry International

Research

Professor Thomson has made contributions in a number of domains, and he has published 472 papers to date in the peer-reviewed international scientific literature. Perhaps his contribution to new knowledge is most evident through his involvement in the Dunedin Multidsicplinary Health and Development Study. That work has generated unprecedented information on the natural history of oral conditions from childhood to midlife.

Professor Thomson has also made seminal contributions to measuring dry mouth, and to understanding the condition’s occurrence, natural history and antecedents.

Professor Thomson has made crucially important contributions to the development, testing and field use of instruments for measuring oral-health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) in children, as well as to understanding of the determinants of OHRQoL in adults. He has made important contributions to knowledge of the oral health of older people. Thomson’s national oral health survey work in Australasia has been internationally influential; he has added considerable value by conducting secondary analyses and publishing papers on a wide range of topics.

Professor Thomson was included as one of the top contributors to dental public health research in the last half century in a 2016 bibliometric analysis (doi: 10.1111/cdoe.12249), and his work features in a 2021 overview of the 100 most cited papers in dental public health journals (doi/epdf/10.1111/cdoe.12572).

Additional details

Professor Thomson was awarded the CNZM in the 2025 New Year's Honours, and he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ in 2021. He also has the rare honour of two separate Distinguished Scientist Awards from the IADR (International Association for Dental Research): the 2010 H. Trendley Dean Memorial Award, for meritorious research in epidemiology and public health, and the 2014 Geriatric Oral Research Award. He is the first NZ-based scientist to have been honoured by the IADR.

In 2022, Thomson (with Professors Richie Poulton, Terrie Moffitt and Avshalom Caspi) was awarded the 2022 Rutherford Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand. In 2017, Thomson was in the team awarded the 2016 Prime Minister’s Science Prize, which went to 10 Principal Investigators in the Dunedin Study. In 2019, he was awarded the Chaffer Medal (for distinguished performance in health research) by the Otago Medical Postgraduate Society. In 2010, he received the Sir John Walsh Research Award (for research over an extended period by a member of the University of Otago Faculty of Dentistry). In 2009, he was awarded the Alan Docking Award for distinguished research in dentistry by the Australia-NZ Division of the IADR. In 2015, he was made a Fellow of the NZ Dental Association.

He is Editor-in-Chief of Gerodontology (published by John Wiley and Sons). He was Editor-in-Chief (2015-2021) of Community Dentistry and Oral Epidemiology. He has recently retired after 13 years as Associate Editor for the European Journal of Oral Sciences. He was Editor of the New Zealand Dental Journal from 2007 to 2014. He has served terms on various Editorial Advisory Boards. He was President of the IADR’s Geriatric Oral Research Group in 2012-13.

Publications

Natarajan, A. K., Ekambaram, M., Cooper, E. J., Bruce-Jones, J. E., Collett, L. A., Thoroughgood, R. E., Schurr, A. R. Z.-L., & Thomson, W. M. (2025). Sustainability of improvement in oral-health-related quality of life following dental treatment under general anaesthetic: The role of family functioning. International Journal of Paediatric Dentistry. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/ipd.13319 Journal - Research Article

Ruiz, B., Broadbent, J. M., Thomson, W. M., Ramrakha, S., Boden, J., McLeod, G., Moffitt, T. E., Caspi, A., & Poulton, R. (2025). Caries trajectories from childhood to adulthood associated with mental disorders in midlife. Journal of Public Health Dentistry. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1111/jphd.12665 Journal - Research Article

MacEntee, M. I., Müller, F., Owen, C. P., & Thomson, W. M. (Eds.). (2025). Oral healthcare and the frail elder (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 357p. doi: 10.1002/9781394182176 Edited Book - Research

Deutsch, A. A., Thomson, W. M., & MacEntee, M. I. (2025). Mitigating the effects of harmful commodities on dental caries and periodontal diseases: Section 1: Dental caries. In M. I. MacEntee, F. Müller, C. P. Owen & W. M. Thomson (Eds.), Oral healthcare and the frail elder. (2nd ed.) (pp. 208-216). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. doi: 10.1002/9781394182176 Chapter in Book - Research

Thomson, W. M., & Yao, C. S. (2025). Dry mouth and medications. In M. I. MacEntee, F. Müller, C. P. Owen & W. M. Thomson (Eds.), Oral healthcare and the frail elder. (2nd ed.) (pp. 160-179). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons. doi: 10.1002/9781394182176 Chapter in Book - Other

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