Fran is currently investigating stakeholder engagement – both from the perspective of attaining/retaining social licence and from the stance of managing Grand Challenges where multiple parties/organisations need to come together to resolve complex, messy problems. This work is grounded in her work in strategy, group decision and negotiation support and project management.

Her work is strongly influenced by a belief that research should be both rigorous and relevant and as such she has worked extensively with organisations (public, private, NFP, national and international).  

Aligned with the practice orientation, is an interest in teaching, particularly to post-experience audiences. As such Fran delivers executive education/master classes to individuals and organisations – both in Australia and internationally.

Fran has worked in universities in a range of countries (France, the US, the United Kingdom and Australia).  She has also held positions at Bordeaux Business School, UWA, Tilburg University, is an Honorary Professor at Manchester University. This with her international research interests and teaching, has given her a global perspective.

She is an elected British Academy of Management Fellow, has won numerous best paper prizes at national and international conferences, sits or has sat on several journal editorial boards, and been awarded the INFORMS Group Decision and Negotiation Lifetime award. She has been both an ESRC and EPSRC grant assessor in the UK, an SHRCC grant assessor in Canada and an ARC Assessor in Australia

Fran is widely published, having produced five books, 26 book chapters and more than 100 peer reviewed journal articles (predominantly A and A*). She has been a regular speaker at international conferences and regularly invited to contribute towards Handbooks/Encyclopedias. Fran has also been involved in a number of research projects with total funding for these projects having exceeded $6.5 million.  Fran is an active supervisor of postgraduate students, having 23 completed PhD/DBA students, seven ongoing students.