Rafael Olea Franco is a full-time Professor-Researcher at the Center for Linguistic and Literary Studies at El Colegio de México, where he specializes in the work of Jorge Luis Borges and in Mexican and Latin American narrative of the 19th and 20th centuries. He is also a professor of the Postgraduate course in Letters at UNAM. He has taught courses at foreign universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Paris X (Nanterre), Duke University, Carleton College and Princeton University.

He received his doctorate in Romance Languages from Princeton University and in Hispanic Literature from El Colegio de México. Since 2006 he is a National Researcher level 3 in the National System of Researchers. He is a member of the Editorial Board of seven international journals and editor of two collections printed in Germany. He received the 2003 Alfonso Reyes National Prize for Literary Essay.