Rate My Professor Rachel Franks

Dr Rachel Franks serves as Coordinator, Education & Scholarship at the State Library of New South Wales, while holding positions as a Conjoint Fellow and Honorary Associate Lecturer in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Science at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She is also engaged in true crime research at the University of Sydney. Franks possesses a Doctor of Philosophy in Australian crime fiction from the University of Central Queensland, a second PhD on true crime texts from the University of Sydney, a Master of Information Studies from the University of Canberra, a Bachelor of Arts (Adult Education) from the University of Technology Sydney, a Bachelor of Arts from Charles Sturt University, and a Graduate Diploma in Education (Secondary) from Charles Sturt University. Her research interests include Australian, Golden Age, and hardboiled crime fiction; creative writing; ethics and punishment in fiction; food studies; popular culture; readers' advisory services; and true crime. An award-winning writer and researcher, her scholarship on these topics has been presented at numerous conferences worldwide.

Franks maintains an extensive publication record across books, chapters, journal articles, and conference papers. Notable books include The Real and the Reflected: Heroes and Villains in Existent and Imagined Worlds (2020, co-edited with Susan E. Meindl), Crime Uncovered: Private Investigator (2016, co-edited with Alistair Rolls), With(out) Trace: Interdisciplinary Investigations into Time, Space and the Body (2016, co-edited with Simon Dwyer and Reina Green), and The Letter of the Law: Contemporary Debates on Language, Dignity and the Punished Body (2014). Key chapters feature Facts and Fictions: The Liminal Space Between True Crime and Crime Fiction (2024), Visualising Villains: Crafting Criminals in Australian Crime Fiction (2020), and Cold Case: Investigating Time, Space and the Body in Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs (1942) (2019). Prominent journal articles encompass Myths, Media, and Judicial Execution: Writing the Biography of Hangman Robert Howard (2023, Journal of Asia-Pacific Pop Culture) and True Crime: The Regular Reinvention of a Genre (2016). She has edited special issues such as TEXT Special Issue 37: Crime Fiction: The Creative/Critical Nexus (with Jesper Gulddal and Alistair Rolls) and themed issues of M/C Journal. Franks has earned the 2017 PopCAANZ Outstanding Contribution Award, the 2016 AAWP Most Outstanding Critical/Theoretical Paper Award, and the 2015 Jean Arnot Memorial Fellowship from the State Library of New South Wales, reflecting her influence in popular culture studies, crime fiction scholarship, and librarianship.