Raelene Frances is Emeritus Professor of History at the Australian National University. Her major academic appointments have been at the University of New South Wales, where she taught history from 1992-2007 prior to taking up the position of Dean of Arts at Monash University (2007-2017). Most recently she was Dean of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at the ANU, from 2017 to 2023.

She has published on the history of work, women’s history, Aboriginal/European contact history, religious and community history and has also co-edited several collections of essays on Australian and New Zealand history.

Her books include The Politics of Work, which won the Australian Historical Association’s Hancock Prize, Women and the Great War (co-authored with Bruce Scates), which won the New South Wales Premier’s History Prize and Selling Sex: A Hidden History of Prostitution, which was short-listed for the Ernest Scott History Prize. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

She is currently completing a biography of pioneering Australian doctor and social reformer, Mary Booth, co-authored with Bruce Scates. It will be published by Miegunya Press in 2025.