How to Begin a Career as a Historian
A historian can be professional or amateur; both types conduct research using references, such as newspapers and periodicals. They analyze and interpret facts before disseminating, with passion and desire, their acquired historical information with others. What separates you from an amateur historian includes your experience and education. In fact, your career as a historian begins before you look at any historical document or placing any past events in historical prospective. As of May 2010, the mean salary for a professional historian was $57,840 a year, reports the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
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Instructions
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Graduate from college with an undergraduate degree in history. A bachelor degree provides you with the foundation you need, such as statistics, analytical skills and researching. Don't stop with a bachelor's degree. Although you can start your career with a bachelor's degree, you have limited career opportunities. Career options--with a bachelor's degree--include research assistant and history writer.
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Pursue a history internship. During your undergraduate history program, complete a history internship offered through nonprofit organizations, government agencies, museums or historical societies.
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Gain field experience. To start you historian career, you can volunteer at nonprofit organizations, museums and government agencies. During your volunteer experience you will learn how to interpret historical sites and record documents.
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Determine you specialty. You can choose among different types of specialties, such as sports historian, or specialize in an area of history like the Civil War. Determine your specialty based on your historical interest.
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Complete graduate studies. To qualify for many historian jobs, such as a history professor or as a museum curator, you need either a master's degree or a PhD in history. During your graduate career, you may have to teach history classes.
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Tips & Warnings
Don't worry if you haven't picked your specialty by the time you are in graduate school. Often as students advance in their history education, their specialization becomes even more focused. For example, a PhD dissertation typically requires that you concentrate on a particular subject, event, people or fields.
Although a master's degree in history affords more career opportunities than a four-year undergraduate degree, you may need a PhD depending on your specialty. To teach at a college or university or work in the public sector, employers prefer you have a PhD.
Employers expect you to have a combination of work-related experience, training and required skills to work as a professional historian.
References
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