- Assistant Professor, Career Track
- Assistant Director and Archivist, Hanford History Project
- Director, Hanford Oral History Project
Biography
Current History 105 Issues Taught
- Humans and the Environment: Nuclear Energy and Climate Change
- Globalization: Global Pandemics
- Roots of Inequality: Racial Inequality
- Diverse Ways of Thinking: War and Terror
- Roots of Contemporary Conflict: The Global Nuclear Order
Other Courses Taught:
- Hist 110 American History to 1877
- Hist 111 American History 1877 to Present
- Hist 250 Peoples of the United States
- Hist 318 United States, 1914-1945
- Hist 319 United States, 1945-Present
- Hist 420 United States, 1980-Present
- Hist 395 Topics in History: Atomic World
About Robert Franklin
Robert Franklin is a public and academic historian of the Hanford Nuclear Site near Richland, WA, and his research focuses on 20th century US with a particular focus on the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. He holds a dual appointment as Assistant Director of the Hanford History Project at WSU Tri-Cities where he manages the Department of Energy’s Hanford Collection, an archive, archaeological, and artifact collection that documents the history of the Hanford Site from 1945-1990. He also directs the Hanford Oral History Project and related projects focused on the Black and Latinx communities of the Mid-Columbia. He is a frequent collaborator with the National Park Service Manhattan Project National Historical Park (MAPR) as a docent and subject matter expert, and president of the B Reactor Museum Association, a non-profit group that supports interpretative efforts at MAPR. For Washington State University he serves as the Tri-Cities representative for the Roots of Contemporary Issues Program and represents the College of Arts and Sciences on the Resident Faculty Organization at WSU Tri-Cities.
He, along with Robert Bauman, is a co-editor and co-author of two books in the Hanford Histories series, Nowhere to Remember: Hanford, White Bluffs, and Richland to 1943 and Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance: Voices from the Hanford Region. His current research projects focus on early waste management decisions at Hanford and the history of the early Cold War.
Robert earned his Master’s in Public History (2014) from Washington State University and a BA in History from the University of Hawaii Hilo (2011).