How to Become a Historian

As a history undergraduate who wants to pursue a career as a professional historian, I would like to know what you do or have done to help pave the way in becoming a historian. Here are some of my suggestions:

1. Get published in a peer-reviewed journal or start a book. Some universities offer an undergraduate journal otherwise begin by publishing in the uni magazine or in your local paper.

2. Get practical work experience. Volunteer or gain an internship at a museum or historical society.

3.Become a Research Assistant for a professor or a graduate student. Some universities offer an internship program.

4. Join a historical society or history club at your university. They can offer internships or opportunities to publish and if you�re brave, you could submit papers when conferences have a �call for papers� to present.

5. Become a tutor.

I would like to know if you have any more suggestions and your personal experiences with these.

It's hard to do that when one has qualifications from a university though... I would like to do that (I was considering doing something for the "ancient warfare" magazine...) but I'm not sure that they would accept something from someone as young as me. Also, would getting published in any form now help in postgraduate areas for reputational purposes and the purposes of showing how much experience one has?

Edited by Aster Thrax Eupator - 08-Jan-2008 at 20:31

If you're a history undergraduate, the best way is thus (so I have found)

Aster here are two pieces of advice learned the hard way:

1) For English-speaking students, the US is of course an option to consider (they have ten times more unis than in England). In this case, writing for non-scientific reviews is a real plus. Not that real peer-reviewed ones would hurt but they focus on your willingness to do things, so basically anything is potentially good.

2) Specially for you if you are interested in Ancient History, you should always keep a door open in the case you ultimately fall out of love with the subject. Not mentioning than financial issues may force you to get a career in the real world for a while before going back to the academic life. Thus you should get classes that would give you skills more easily marketable than fluent Latin and ancient Greek. So get some classes in economics, development, finance, psychology or geography (try to get a BS while getting your MA in history). Besides it may shed new lights on your own historic researches.

Best of luck

Oh yeah one more thing: try to master several modern languages it is a real plus whatever option you take)


Edited by Maharbbal - 14-Jan-2008 at 01:50

I'd say, just write something original (doesn't have to be true), make a wikipedia page for yourself (also doesn't have to be true... per the Gene Weingarten example), and let the job interviews roll in. Honestly, there are some serious quacks in the "academia," so don't let things like historical factuality limit your options. Once you've got a name for yourself, you can always retract all of your previous statements and get down to the business of actual historical analysis. And by that point, you've garnered some publicity for yourself, and hopefully made a little bit of money. A little creativity goes a long way in this field.

'For English-speaking students, the US is of course an option to consider (they have ten times more unis than in England). '

Hello to you guys,