Martin Francis is the Professor of War and History at the University of Sussex, a position he has held since 2015. He received his BA from the University of Manchester in 1985 and his DPhil from the University of Oxford in 1994. He began his teaching career at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, before going on to positions at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth and Royal Holloway, University of London. From 2003 to 2015 he was the Henry R. Winkler Professor of Modern History at the University of Cincinnati in the United States. His non-academic interests include opera, baseball, and walking on Hampstead Heath.