I’m one of the thousands of historians with PhDs who haven’t managed to land a job inside our profession. It’s not that the work doesn’t exist—universities just don’t want to create full-time positions to teach and research history when they could pay several part-time contractors to teach individual classes instead. It’s a problem in all the humanities right now, and has been for many years.

So I teach writing methods in a business college instead. Two of my colleagues are also historians (the rest of the department comes from English and communications backgrounds). It’s fun work that’s all about writing methods, and it’s made me a better teacher and a better history writer. It also keeps me in the university system, which makes it easier to keep working on my research and writing on the side (though this isn’t something I’m paid to do, so it often gets sidelined for weeks at a time when the grading gets heavy). I’m still able to attend conferences, present my research, and participate in the field. But teaching history specifically was always something I enjoyed, so I’m still chasing that full time history professorship—there just aren’t more than a dozen or so good openings each year in my field, so it’s kinda like playing the lottery.

The flairs and mods of this sub come from all different backgrounds. Some are professionals, but since online communities skew young, many more are still on the way there (i.e. current postgrads). Others are former students of history (or some related field) who have gone off into other lines of work but still care about the subject. Still others are self-educated experts. We don't ask for proof of formal qualifications. We just want people to show that they know what they're doing and they're excited to be doing it here.

Personally, I happen to be one of the professional historians - at least for the time being. This is the 5th year since I finished my PhD and I've managed to stay in academia so far, but I've never known where I would be the next year, and I don't know now. It's hard. There are very few permanent positions and huge numbers of highly qualified and skilled candidates for each one. Very few of my PhD cohort are still holding on; many have switched to different careers (in teaching, publishing, museums, heritage, admin) or have gone back to university to study something else.

I got my PhD in history, and I worked as a postdoctoral researcher for a few years. I still try to do research and publish and go to conferences and stuff like that, but otherwise I'm not really currently working in academia. Sometimes I get to give guest lectures for one of my undergrad professors but that's not really the same as having a teaching position.

Now I work at home as a translator - most translators have actual degrees in translation, but I kind of just fell into it accidentally. I do a lot of academic translating anyway and I think it's fun. It's a pretty good job and I get to work at home, so I can still do my academic work in my spare time.

So am I a "professional historian"? I would say yes, but maybe people working at universities would say no. I dunno.