He was Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati from 2003 to 2015, when he was appointed Professor of War and History at the University of Sussex.
Martin Francis was awarded a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from the University of Manchester in 1985, and went on to complete a doctorate (DPhil) at the University of Oxford in 1994,[1] awarded for a thesis entitled "Labour policies and socialist ideas: the example of the Attlee government, 1945–1951".
[2] Francis taught at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and Royal Holloway, University of London, before being appointed Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati in 2003.
In 2015, he returned to the United Kingdom as Professor of War and History at the University of Sussex.
[1] Francis's work focuses on 20th-century British politics and gender; he has written on the Labour Party, masculinity, leisure, the cultural impact of modern warfare, the emotional economy in British politics, and British cinema.