A graduate of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, he is a Full Professor and Head of the University’s Department of Military History at the Faculty of History. He received his doctorate in 1999, and the academic degree of Doctor Habilitatus in 2008. He was awarded the title of Professor by the President of the Republic of Poland in 2019. An intern at the Ukrainian Catholic University, the Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi National Army Academy, and the Ivan Krypiakevych Institute of Ukrainian Studies, all based in Lviv. Professor Franz is a member of the Military History Section at the Committee on Historical Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, of the Commission on the History of Wars and Military Science of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków, and of the Board of the Naval Museum in Gdynia. He has supervised 10 doctoral theses in history and political science, and authored more than 400 scholarly and popular science works, including more than 30 books. His publications have been printed in Poland, Ukraine, Slovakia, Great Britain, Estonia and Russia. Professor Franz has been the recipient of grants from the National Program for the Development of Humanities. His research centers on the history of wars and military science from the early modern period to the end of the 20th century, and on the history of the Eastern Borderlands of the Second Polish Republic, with a particular focus on the intelligentsia. In 2022, he was presented with the Leon Wasilewski Award for his series “The Archives of the John Casimir University in Lviv”.