Franklin is currently an associate professor at the Instituto de Economia at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, where he teaches on macroeconomics, growth theory, and political economy to both graduate and undergraduate students of economics and also for the graduate program on international political economy. He holds a PhD and MS in economics from Cambridge University and an MS from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
Franklin is also a research associate at the Institute of Economics, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil). He has been a visiting scholar at the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean in Chile (1997), a senior visiting scholar at the Centro di Ricerche e Documentazione Piero Sraffa, Università Roma Tre (Italy, 2004), and a senior teaching fellow at the Graz Schumpeter Summer School at the Graz Schumpeter Centre, Universität Graz (Austria, 2008).
Franklin was part of the founding board of directors of the International Development Economics Associates of heterodox development economists (2001–4) and a member of the scientific committee of the International Celso Furtado Center for Development Policies in Rio de Janeiro (2009–11). He was also a researcher for the Brazilian National Research Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq, 1997–2011).