Background: I’ve grown up enamoured by modern history, particularly modern military history and international relations. I’m always watching history documentaries, reading all the books I can get my hands on, and regularly consult this thread for recommendations. I studied English Literature at Exeter and graduated 68%, enough to meet course entry requirements for top London unis. I’m unhappy with the business roles I’ve been in. I am a bilingual English-French speaker, and feel confident of engaging well with Spanish language sources in any potential historical research as I studied it for 3 years in school and can read pretty well. Am also prepared to invest time learning German, Finnish and Russian to engage with primary sources. Just started learning Mandarin but in very early stages.
Situation: I cannot stop thinking about a career in history (academia). Specifically I would love to study history in an academic setting as far as possible (perhaps PhD if given the chance?) and teach or do anything that would involve writing about the subjects I love. This year I’ve been studying the Spanish Civil War, WW2, and I’ve also looked at the Russo-Finnish conflicts, as well as Interregnum (re-reading the Richard Evans trilogy on this period). have studied them this year and throughout my life since being a wee lad. I know academic opportunities are incredibly narrow, and are the preserve of the cream of the crop, I.e. top of the class or best research etc. I would love to hear from people with experience navigating this field and what steps you took that led to a result along these lines.
I know specialisms are important when picking research fields, so right now I think viable routes of specialising could generally involve modern French or Spanish history up to and including WW2, Western or Eastern Front from German/Russian or German/western European perspectives (I know this is vague), or something to do with the Finnish-Russian David and Goliath military conflicts during ww2 (winter and continuation wars). This last subject seems to have particularly weak and ageing scholarship (Trotter comes to mind for weak, Max Jakobson’s diplomatic account is ancient and hard to find etc) so I think this could be fertile ground for attempting a bold new contribution to these topics that finds a good balance of meeting the rigours of academic standard while also renewing interest for general readers (I’m thinking commercially publishable academic work(s))
Apologies for the ramble but would appreciate anybody’s input on making this happen and how best to maximise my chances. I was thinking take a year or two to save up enough money to live, plus I could take a TEFL course to teach English as a foreign language to help support myself while studying (would give me a higher hourly rate) in addition to what savings I have. I would also apply for a loan to pay for the course .
I also thought taking more time out gives me a chance to read as many books on these subjects of interest as possible so I am better equipped to come to the table with ideas on what to write for dissertation and prospective PhD thesis; a full time masters is only a year long, and if I’m not mistaken PhD applications are made during this time, so there would be little time for consuming all the books I want to consume now, engage with the course materials. and still get an excellent grade that would lead to further study and academic employment. It doesn’t have to be a professor/historian (obviously this would be ideal), but also archival and documentary jobs on these subjects would be great. Also thinking of starting a YouTube channel for military conflicts and international relations as Biographics is decent but could be better done. This would also help me get in to a history programme I should think.
Thank you so much for your insights and unique perspectives.
Best, T
I have a few thoughts on this, but one thing above all else: there is no specific set of results or research trajectory that you can achieve during postgraduate study that will with any certainty lead to a career in the fields you're interested in. That's not to say that such a career is impossible, but rather than past a certain point it's a lottery - being in the right place with the right skillset and connections at the exact right time. You can't plan your way there, and once you start playing the game of 'well, if I can just reach the required standard then I'll be fine', you'll find that the bar is constantly getting raised on you, if it was even clear in the first place. I don't know of any early career scholar who thinks that academia currently functions as a meritocracy, and the alternative adjacent career paths are hardly less competitive. If you're serious about pursuing them they can't be an afterthought, but rather something in which you lay groundwork by building relevant experience, skills and connections during your studies.
In terms of what you want to specialise in, for postgraduate study at least you need to be thinking less in terms of 'how do I write a new definitive text in this field' and more 'how do I contribute to specialist scholarship within the field'. Overviews like Evans' Third Reich trilogy won't get you to that point - it's not like they're bad books, but they aren't the kinds of texts that will let you know what the current state of the field is, what the major ongoing debates are and where work remains to be done. The ideal PhD topic, for instance, has relatively narrow, well-defined limits that allow for depth and comprehensiveness, but still allows you to make a case for wider relevance, and lets you speak to broader debates and conceptual issues. These topics don't grow on trees - finding them takes familiarity with specialist work and the potential source base, though having a good supervisor (especially at Masters level) can help a great deal in that process. It's absolutely vital that if you're shopping for postgraduate courses, you make sure that you'll have access to at least one researcher working in the area you're interested in. In the meantime, doing a deeper dive into more recent specialist work (likely published in scholarly journals) rather than reading broadly will help.
The last key thing to keep in mind is methodology. Traditional military and diplomatic history are not exactly cutting-edge approaches in themselves, and establishing yourself as that kind of historian is not a great career move at the moment. Contributing to current scholarship is going to require embracing a broader methodological perspective - it's not like no-one studies the history of these conflicts any more, but they're asking very different questions than they did a generation or two ago. Again, this is something crucial to consider when shopping for Masters degrees - will the degree not just give you access to specialist support in your topic area, but also increase the range of intellectual tools you have to approach the topic in innovative ways?
I will speak on the Russo-Finnish part, as my recent Master’s thesis focused on Finland. If you want to pursue that angle, you really need to come up with something more focused. For example, I looked at the diplomatic relationship between the US and Finland (DM me and I can send you the link). The reason I recommend a specific focus is that because there is little recent scholarship, you will have to do your research prior to presenting a thesis idea so that skeptical professors will approve to work with you.
Also, Master’s programs with a thesis are a minimum of two years in the States... and even then you need to hit the ground running with writing your thesis.
Best of luck, and if you decide to go this route, be prepared to spend a lot of money on Amazon for books, because as you rightly point out, they’re hard to find and thus expensive!