A question regarding a career path in history, I will write some things that I love about history and I hope someone could put a name to the description of the career.
What kind of job is heavy in academia but does not do very much teaching, if at all. Maybe like a translator for translating Ancient Greek’s Oxyrhynchus Papyrus or writing research purposes for Jstor (How do the majority of them make their living).
I do not like doing tours of a building or an area (so no tour guides although I have not tried it).
Another thing is if you like European history but you don’t live in Europe, are you mostly just limited to museums?
So basically a name for a history job for an introvert is a career that I would like to know. I do hope this not too simple and not too complicated of a question. I loved history at school and now I don’t know what job is very similar in terms of papers, studying and low amount of interactions with people that there is career-wise.
I'm a research historian at a museum, which is probably the perfect history job for introverts because almost none of my day to day work, aside from the occasional conference presentation or external request, is public facing. I think my employer pays me not to interact with the public. I used to teach on the side for extra cash but I hated it and frankly was not very good at it.
Unfortunately, there aren't that many jobs like mine out there, and I stumbled into the one I have essentially by blind luck. The fact of the matter is that the job market is very bad for historians of all stripes, and it's hard to get a job period, much less one that suits all of your personal preferences. You would probably be best suited going down the library/archives route, but those jobs generally require specialized training, and I can't give you much advice there because I don't have that training. Purely research-based jobs are few and far between and there certainly aren't enough of them to go through your entire education with that as your career goal.
Your best bet would be finding a university that is more research focused than teaching focused, but essentially any academic history job will require at least some teaching. Those JSTOR articles are usually written by academics who also teach.
Hell, when I was in undergrad professors who were clearly just going through the motions in class so they could go do research were a dreaded trope.
If you like stuff (as in material culture) you could look into curatorial work at museums. Curators at many museums are able to have fairly minimal public contact, but if you aren't a fiend for the details of material culture you're gonna have a bad time. Curatorial work also requires specialized skills gained through advanced education, so that's more schooling/cost.
Might seem a bit of a plot twist but I'm extremely introverted and have found that I actually love teaching - despite that when I was in high school and even university I really dreaded speaking in front of a class mostly.
It's not so much that I get energy from it - but rather that it's almost like putting on a cloak and being a superhero of some kind lol. I get to go do something I think is cool and that I seem to do pretty well, and then at the end of the day I can go home and be back to being a homebody. Maybe it doesnt make sense but regardless, it's pretty rewarding