I don't believe historian is a legally protected title (like doctor for example) so you can call yourself a historian if you like. However in my experience, I'd only call those with PhD's in history or are actively working in the field historians. I have a history degree and I work in an archive. I would not call myself a historian simply because I'm not in active study, nor have I published anything. I'm not entirely sure what kind of answer you're looking for so I'm not sure if this answer is helpful, but that's my take on it as someone with a degree in history and working in an adjacent field.

I would agree with /u/Zaldar's statement:

I'd only call those with PhD's in history or are actively working in the field historians.

But I would even eliminate some PhDs from this because some (like a friend of mine) earned a PhD where he studied British colonial economic trading during the 1930s, but now has worked for years for a state government's economic policy team, thus he is an economist, not really a historian.

But generally, the idea should be, a person should have history degrees (plural) from the start and be active in the history profession in order to call himself an historian. I've often used myself as an example of a historian who is not an academic (i.e. a professor at a university).

First, I have a BA in history (no concentration) from Towson University (2014) and have an MA in Historical Studies (concentration is American Revolution & Public History) from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Professionally, I am a public librarian and historian who runs the local historical center and archive at my branch. Essentially, the historical center has an exhibit room which I oversee and lead a team of volunteers in creating new content for. I also assist customers with research for things like books, genealogy, and also even a documentary. I am also a consulting historian for the Maryland State Archives for an ongoing research project they have going on studying Maryland Soldiers who fought during the American Revolution. I've also had articles published through the digital encyclopedia of Mount Vernon. I am also in the process of working with my thesis committee to actually condense part of my thesis and get it published in an academic journal.

So again, part of what it takes to really be a historian is to be actively involved in contributing to historical conversations both to the public and academic community.

I don't mind others without a doctorate or formal training in history or a related field calling themselves historians (I did mine in Science and Technology Studies, but with a historical thesis), unless they produce rubbish. Truth be told, there are many professional historians (especially those working on controversial stuff) who are almost completely reliant on conservative secondary sources to the neglect of crucial primary material, so if an amateur historian produces sterling work that challenges common views and can back up claims with evidence and contextualized analyses I'll happily call them a peer. (Don't get me started about certain scientists who think they are historians, though - like Steven Pinker and his latest manifesto on the Enlightenment, which is a caricature of history at best).

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I am going to somewhat dissent here from what has already been said by /u/zaldarr, /u/NientedeNada and /u/uncovered-history (and pretty much everyone else, for that matter). I should stress right now that this reply is not directed to anyone and nothing here should be read as an attempted refutation of a particular person's argument - I just want to draw attention to my respectful disagreement!

By way of an opening caveat I must stress that I come from a very different education system to our American contributors. In the United Kingdom we do not have the concept of 'major' and 'minor' in degrees like American institutions do (or at least, it is a very uncommon phenomenon). Our educational system is also structured very differently; the end of formal compulsory education is 16, and there is an intermediate stage of study between high school and university that - to my understanding - combines elements of first year undergraduate study in the US with final year high school study (though veers considerably more towards the latter). There is no general educational requirement at British universities. You spend three years intensively studying one subject (or two compatible subjects half-and-half for some people) from start to finish, and whilst some institutions allow you to customise your degree with interdisciplinary modules, most people who go to study History will study it exclusively and intensively. This offers important context for what I'm going to discuss here. I cannot promise everything I'm about to talk about generalises to the United States, which is where most of our readers are from.

Now, having said all that - and it will become relevant later in this post I think - I would open properly by saying that I think a historian is fundamentally anyone actively engaged in the study of the human past since the advent of writing with the hope of producing new knowledge, and who pursues that study with an open mind to what the evidence they find might tell them (as opposed to someone who sets about doing historical research to prove what they've already convinced themselves is right, which I think changes the nature of the enterprise entirely). I truly, genuinely believe that's the be all and end all of being a historian. I think historian is best used as a descriptive, not a prescriptive, term. I also think that focusing on degrees and employment is misleading and ultimately harmful, both for individuals and the historical profession as a whole.

Historian is more useful to us as a descriptive term rather than a prescriptive term. If someone without any university qualifications and no employment history in historical work spends their entire life producing books about the past for consumption outside of the academy, is it really fair for us to say that they aren't a historian? What should we call them? They aren't trying to write fiction as some critics like to disparagingly claim (and if anyone thinks that they all essentially are, that person would perhaps do well to spend a little time being humbled by the words of Hayden White). 'Non-fiction' isn't a particularly helpful descriptor either - it's far too broad of a category. Perhaps this is simply a deficiency of the English language, but in most cases we would refer to such a person as an author of popular history, and surely anyone who writes history is an historian.

What I think my peers here are really trying to do is draw a distinction not so much between historians and everyone else, but between historians and Historians (note the capitalisation). Like most academic pursuits, the study of the past has become professionalised with the rise of modern university systems in the last couple of centuries. Within the academy we draw distinctions between people who write what we think of as good history - individuals who we legitimise as Historians in the 'proper' sense of the word - and those who write weaker histories (who we may perhaps dismiss as 'popular', 'amateur' or not historians at all). This is not unique to our discipline, though it's perhaps more pronounced in our field than most because ours has one of the largest (perhaps the largest) market for non-academic literature and content to contend and engage with.

The key defining barrier for establishing these boundaries is usually, as the answers of my peers would suggest, a university education to a certain level (either an MA or more commonly as the consensus here seems to be to a PhD or equivalent). We stress that for someone to legitimately call themselves a historian they must be qualified in a certain formal way. If they aren't qualified in this way then their practice must (except for a few 'the exception helps prove the rule' cases) be heterodox and not 'proper' history. We very likely also have the expectation that someone should still be professionally engaged in historical work; that their employment should relate directly or substantially to historical research/studies, whether within the academy itself or not. We privilege the university and its professional hinterlands (by which I mean institutions like museums, academic libraries and the like) as the definitive sites of knowledge production within our society.

There are a few problems that I have with this narrative. The first and fundamental is seeing formal education as an intrinsic part of becoming a historian. This I fear reinforces a misunderstanding what the primary benefit of university instruction in history (and indeed any humanity) is. Those who didn't study history at the undergraduate level tend to suppose that it's a lot like history classes in school, and you spend your days sat in lecture halls frantically taking notes to remember dates and events. And whilst there's definitely an element of that at the start of undergraduate study in particular, a great deal of studying history at university involves self-directed learning when it comes to the what and the how. Quality History programmes invest most of their energy into helping you develop the skills that let you start writing good history: presentation of ideas, how to undertake research, source analysis, critical thinking, contextualisation, historiographical awareness and so on. A History degree is not about broadening your knowledge base so you can tell your friends fun facts about the past. It's about developing a range of vocational skills employed by historians (and which happen to be highly transferable to a range of other vocations).

Let me illuminate how I see the difference from my own experiences: I am not sure that I am terribly well educated. Yes, I hold multiple advanced qualifications from two very prestigious universities - an achievement I am proud of and an opportunity I am eternally grateful to have had. But if the characteristics of a great education are well-roundedness and broadness of knowledge and understanding, I think mine falls rather short. I didn't do very well in school and owe getting to university (and it took me more than one go) as much to dumb luck as hard work. It is not an exaggeration to say a single extra mistake or wrong answer on one of my high school exams would mean my life would have gone very, very differently indeed. There are many areas where my education and knowledge base are lacking where the average undergraduate student at my alma mater could run circles around me, and there are many people who are far smarter than me in the world regardless of the level of formal education they've enjoyed. But I am very well trained; I was privileged to get to spend half a decade or so studying and researching my speciality (including two years at a world-leading research centre), working with experts, and developing my skills as a historian before my current work.

So the benefit of a history undergraduate degree that specialises in historical studies is not so much further your education in some broad sense as it is training you. And here is where I perhaps differ sharply from many of my peers: if we conceptualise the experiencing of working towards a history degree fundamentally as being about training, then I am not particularly convinced that this training can only be delivered through a university curriculum. There are men and women without university training across the world who are engaged in historical research and knowledge production: in community centres, charities, schools, local libraries, students unions, places of worship and private homes. Although museums and libraries sometimes involve themselves in this work, as a whole the professional discipline marginalises it as 'amateur' and not worthy of attention.

Part of the problem we perceive in the academy is that the work done by these historians is seen as simple. That is to say, it doesn't very often engage with theoretical ideas or complex criticism of source material. But does something need to do these things to be history? Some of the moderation team were having a discussion about this earlier and the harsh reality is that history is not a discipline that produces theory. It produces theoretical work but it does not produce theory; it instead borrows theories from other disciplines and applies them to its work. You will find Gayatri Spivak's Can the Subaltern Speak? on most history theory courses at the graduate level and it is arguably a piece dealing with historical research but it doesn't belong to history as a theoretical approach, and Spivak isn't a historian. She simply uses an historical incident to demonstrate her theoretical ideas at work. If someone is applying the principles of the historical method and undertaking critical source-based work to better understand the past, then they're doing history.

I feel (rather guiltily) this subreddit's name somewhat contributes to the confusion. Though there are indeed lots of great historians posting here, it's not necessarily a community for asking questions of historians. "AskHistoriansAndPeopleWhoReadHistoriansWork" would perhaps not roll off the tongue.

I'm not a historian but a Historical Educator, anyway, both here writing about Japanese history, and offline, teaching kids.

You have to climb up the ivory tower, get a PhD, actively engage in research and have published works in a peer reviewed journal if you want to be technical about it.

There is nothing wrong with being an amateur historian, especially if you consider history a very intense and thorough hobby. I have a political science degree, but I'm not a political scientist. I know a hell of a lot about American history and politics and my own focus on North Korea so I'd be able to effectively answer a historical question on those thoroughly like a historian would though.