Robin Franklin is a third-year PhD candidate in Princeton’s History department and an affiliate of the Gender and Sexuality Studies certificate programme. Specialising in the intellectual and cultural history of the United States since 1865, Robin explores how gendered, sexual, and racial power relations have moulded historical experiences of selfhood, time, and desire.

Robin’s dissertation project will be a history of bisexual identity in the twentieth-century United States. A proud student of LGBTQ+ history, Robin is excited to bring together evidence about the politics of bi identity from far-flung areas of the country. His research on bisexuality has so far taken him to archives from across the Midwest, the East Coast, and the West Coast. He is also in the process of writing a more experimental piece concerning the relationship of ethics to visions of erotic pluralism.

In his previous research Robin investigated Black, White, and Indigenous women’s relationships with clock time, analysing the material and visual culture of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century timekeeping and showing how an attentiveness to the gender and racial politics of temporality in everyday life can illuminate the cultural history of capitalism in America. In dialogue with his interest in the conceptual and political stakes of historical writing, he is also revising a series of essays about understandings of historical time in the American past. Subjects of these essays up until now include: the place of the history of temporalities in U.S. historiography; the temporal politics of soul cooking and Black nationalism (c.1960-1980); selfhood and changing visions of the past, present, and future in early-twentieth-century self-help literature; Afrofuturism in the history of music; and the conceptual history of “waiting”.

Most recently Robin has conducted work on a new intellectual history project about the efforts by Native American mental health professionals to decolonise the mind sciences. Further interests of Robin’s include: the history of the emotions; consumer culture; the conceptual terrain of “religious” and “secular” thinking; violence and non-violence; histories of multiracial collaboration; film and popular music; political theory; and the history of political thought.

Prior to arriving in Princeton, Robin graduated in 2018 with a double-starred first in his History BA (Hons) at Christ’s College, University of Cambridge. In 2019, he completed his American History MPhil with distinction on a Dunlevie King’s Hall Studentship at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. His MPhil dissertation, ‘“Women’s Time” in the United States, c.1865-1941’, was awarded the Sara Norton MPhil Prize for the best Cambridge master’s essay concerning US political history. Robin subsequently spent the academic year 2019-2020 on a graduate exchange studentship in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago.

In October 2024, Robin passed his Princeton generals exams with distinction in the fields of: U.S. History from Reconstruction to the Present (Alison Isenberg and Joseph Fronczak); Women, Gender, and Sexuality in U.S. History (Margot Canaday); and Intellectual History and Historical Thought (Natasha Wheatley). He has co-coordinated Princeton’s Modern America Workshop since 2023. Robin is happy to speak with prospective applicants about the History PhD programme at Princeton and is always keen to hear from anyone whose academic interests overlap with his own.

Robin’s enthusiasm for U.S. cultural history originally grew out of his earlier experiences as a musical theatre performer (a life to which he occasionally returns!). His theatre credits include: Malcolm, 13 (Apollo Theatre London, Original West End Cast); Oscar, Sweet Charity (Leicester Curve); Morrie, Brass (Winner of the UK Theatre Award for Best Musical Production, Leeds City Varieties Music Hall; also performed in revival productions at the Hackney Empire, London, and the Old Rep, Birmingham); ‘Fine I’ll Duet Myself’ (54 Below, New York City); Bobby, Company (Logan Center for the Arts, Chicago); Governor Slaton, Parade (The Other Palace, London); and David Frost, Frost/Nixon (ADC Theatre, Cambridge).