Understanding the Historian's Profession and Role

Studying history helps understand present selves; academic historians research and teach, while popular historians engage with entertainment and education.

### Theoretical and Practical Aspects of Being a Historian
* 📜 Historians debate the origins of their profession, with Herodotus often considered the **first historian**, but other candidates include **Sargon the Great** and various **religious texts**.
* 🎯 The concept of being an **objective historian** was highlighted in the Irving v Penguin Books Limited 2000 case, raising questions about the purpose of history as **objectivity, problem-solving, storytelling, or entertainment**.
* 🌍 History is seen as a means of understanding present selves in relation to the past, with the study of history often requiring **empathy and the suspension of value judgments**.
* 💡 History plays a crucial role in shaping societal values, influencing political decisions, and **challenging misconceptions**.
* 🎓 In academia, historians are typically involved in teaching (lectures, classes, marking) and research (publishing in journals, books), with research often **building upon and collaborating with others' work**.
* 🏛 Historians also engage in edutainment through museum curation, documentaries, and books, **influence education policy**, and contribute to commemoration efforts (e.g., **preserving monuments, deciding listed buildings**).

[Music] Maybe you already know what a historian does. Maybe it's really obvious to you. You know, you've seen sex, you've seen The History Boys. You know that you have to be nice about Stalin, and that's good history, to kind of have controversial opinions. I was so nice about Hitler, a much misunderstood man. You know that it's wearing a cowboy hat in front of a mountain, reading old Norse sagas. It's documentaries about Egyptians, and it's sitting in a university debating with people in expensive books that no one can read because they're too expensive. It's not not true, but well, number one, I can't actually find any good videos about what the historian profession is on YouTube. They tend to be very focused on the skills that you acquire as a historian, or like other careers you can do as a historian, like what are the most profitable careers you can do if you do a history degree, and they don't tend to include being a natural historian as a job. And I am still working this out.

and I am nearly five years into higher education training to be a historian. So if it's still sometimes a bit unclear to me, I imagine it's unclear to lots of people. I'm mostly making this video for my family to try and explain that what I'm trying to do is like an actual job. So I'm gonna talk about two sides. I'm gonna talk about the theoretical side, the like, you know, more wishy-washy. What does a historian do like for society? What's it? Why is it important? Um, and then I'm gonna talk about the practical side, okay, like what does a job entail? How do you actually earn money, which is obviously the first question my mum asked me, not in those words, but like, you know, that was the underlying question. How will you make money as a historian? So I do want to include that. I'm not there yet. I am about six months away from finishing my masters. If I get things wrong, one of the wonderful joys that you have when you're in this world.

of history is that you're often wrong, and it's important to be able to be corrected. So if there's anything that you think is either factually inaccurate or just you personally don't agree, um, please, please say. I don't want to seem like I think I'm an authority when I'm not there yet. I'm still a master student. This is just the career that I'm hoping I can have in one shape, way, form, or another. So for the theoretical side, who was the first historian? A lot of people say it is Herodotus. I mean, Cicero said he's the first historian, so that's pretty convenient. But also, sometimes people suggest it was Sargon the Great. There was a biography written about him, although this always leaves me with the question of like, are modern biographies like, say, Robert Pattinson's biography, is that considered a historical document? I went out and I got hold of every single autobiography and biography that's ever been written on Robert Pattinson. I mean, I suppose it is there.

are people who make video essays online that's all about like fan culture, and how people treat teenage girls, and like the things that teenage girls like. So I guess even Robert Patton's biography is a historical document. Not saying it's on the same level as Sargon the Great, but you know, sometimes people think it's Seymour Kian, sometimes people think it's collections or single documents, or um, things like the Vedas, or the Torah, or the Gospels. So all religious sacred texts. And when do they start teaching history? Is it roughly, very loosely part of the seven liberal arts in antiquity, in the early Middle Ages, or is it part of the Renaissance studia humanitatis? Yes, correct, correct word. I get so nervous saying Latin things are out. I need to get over that if I want to do this job. I died then. I need to get over that. There is this idea of being an objective historian, and that came up in this really interesting case that I really recommend you read up.

about which is the Irving Penguin Books Limited 2000 case, which was a libel case. It's complicated, but one historian said that Irving was one of the most dangerous Holocaust deniers. It was proved to be a true statement. In this conversation, there were lots of discussions and articles and papers and things written that were discussing the idea of an objective historian. There were these different principles that were outlined that were kind of part of the idea of being an objective historian. So that kind of brings the question of what's the purpose of being a historian. Is it being objective? Is it solving today's problems with past solutions? Is it a form of storytelling? Is it for entertainment? Is it for posting things like this on Twitter? Don't get me wrong, I love Twitter historians, and I would never want to upset medieval Twitter, but it can be very like, Well, actually, you know, people love to do it. Well, actually, you're wrong. I guess that's what the historian's myth's a long training to be able to do.

In my humble opinion, being a historian is helping us understand our present selves in relation to our past selves. And for me, studying history is an exercise in empathy. It involves taking to pieces our inherent value judgments and trying to let go of them. When you look at a past society, that also is very important that you bring into your everyday life and you lose those judgments as much as possible. To give an example that is close to my heart because I am particularly fond of the early Middle Ages. And when people think about the early Middle Ages versus, say, antiquity. Antiquity has connotations of civilization, of democracy, which, okay, we can agree to disagree. Nice impressive art, big buildings. You'd be surprised by how much big buildings impact how people think about things. I guess the same with Egypt. I think it's an immediate example of structure in a society or like people being able to organize. It doesn't matter if those things are built by slaves. It's if they can do it, then that is seen as an incredibly civilized.

period. And I think that's so interesting that the value that's given or prescribed to big buildings. Anyway, weirdly, people who think about healthcare being good in the ancient period in comparison to the medieval period. Um, there's someone fantastic who I will either show on screen now and or link to ideas of good literacy and also high literary written culture. In comparison, the Middle Ages is seen as a time of death, destruction, plague, crusades, Christianity, superstition, no real culture, and also no real change from 450 to 1450. Which, whether or not those things are true, you can debate that for as long as you like. It's one of the classic does Rome fall, what remains of Rome? It's part of that whole idea and whole discussion. What is interesting to me in those judgments is today in a modern Western society, we, I think, would associate much more strongly. We would associate ourselves with the ancient period in comparison to the medieval period when we make these judgments. Whether or not they're true, they are a deep reflection of what we

think we are now, and also what we think is important now. There could be hours and hours and hours and hours that could go into every single section of what I'm saying. If you disagree with anything, please do say. This is a very vague overview of what history could mean, and it's also just my opinion. Other people would think that solving problems is more important. For me, coming from the UK and seeing the importance of understanding history and understanding where our ideas of traditional values and all of those kinds of things where they come from and what they actually mean in practice, I see history as becoming only more and more and more important, even if it's not necessarily valued in the same way that it once was. So for me, I think history is incredibly important because it is part of our understanding of the world. It's part of our understanding of ourselves. It's part of our understanding of who we would vote for or what we would protest for. All of those things are really connected to history. Now we get into the point of

like, why? What do academics do? I have split it into two sides of what an academic or person working in history might do. The academic side I'm using in a very narrow sense of the word. Really, I'm using academic to mean things that happen in an institution, often a university but a research institute. And then the public popular side. Often those people do the same things. You don't have to have a degree to do popular history. You don't have to do anything with the public to be an academic historian. Often there is a link. They're not always two completely different things. There's people like Mary Beard who is very much an academic historian but also very famous in popular history. Olivet Attelle does so many articles, especially in the last year. She wrote a lot of articles for The Guardian. And she was the first ever female black professor. And I went to a few of her talks and things of various different conferences. And she talked a lot about the um. She actually gave me the idea for this video because she was talking about the

importance of communicating with the public and leaving the insular sphere of the university. In academic history, there are two sides: there's the teaching side and the researching side. Sometimes people do both, sometimes people only do one. It really depends. I think in Australia, you choose one of the two tracks. Some of the PhDs I'm applying to, you're expected to both teach and research; in some of them that I'm applying to, you're only expected to research. So that will vary country to country, universities to university. There's the teaching side: doing lectures, giving classes, marking essays, setting exams, curating courses, all of that kind of thing in a university setting. And that is one aspect of it. The other side of it would be the researching. You often have a quota, I think, or at least a sort of unwritten expectation for how much you should be publishing. So you'll be publishing in academic journals, you might publish a few books during your career. It really depends on what your focus is. How does your research go from

being in a university setting to being something that people would know about, and especially if the research is something really small and seemingly seemingly irrelevant. One of my absolute favorite researchers, um, he's an archaeologist. So, whether or not he's technically a historian is going to be a matter of opinion. I don't know why we can't work together, but anyway, he's done lots of research into Roman catacombs, specifically of early Christians and contemporary Jews, and has done all of this study on bones and tried to identify the stable isotopes in the remains that will tell you what their diet was like. And through identifying what their diet was like, then you can understand what kind of social status those people would have had, how much they moved around, and therefore, for something like the question of early Christians, you would understand why these people were converting to a religion that was illegal because there's a big discussion in historiography about whether the Christian conversion is like something that happens top down. You know, Constantine converts to being Christian and

then there are all these powerful bishops, and they forcibly make pagans convert. And that is definitely, you know, part of it. But also the extent to which Christianity is a grassroots movement, and this sort of grassroots evangelizing. And so, what kinds of people convert to Christianity before it's legal. And that is a really interesting question to me. So, you have someone who might do this research on these catacombs, and they publish it in an academic journal. And then later, when someone is researching early Christianity and that question I've just outlined to you, like why do people convert, they would take that data and they would include it in their larger paper. Or maybe the same size article but on something that's slightly different. So, why do people convert to Christianity. And then maybe later someone will write a book on Christianity in late antiquity in the early Middle Ages, and that they would include this idea about say actually there were lots of people we know from the kinds of fish

that people were eating from this study that was done over here that was included over here actually historia we can suggest that actually maybe christianity was a grassroots movement from the kind of social status early christians were there is this academic collaboration and people using each other's work and people being inspired by each other's works so something that was a bit of a misconception to me was that you would research these things that um no one would ever be interested in and obviously that can happen and i have done one internship where when i was doing it i was like this is so this is completely irrelevant like i'm looking at these manuscripts that say what like 10 monks have seen like what am i doing no one would be interested in this sometimes it feels a bit like that but nothing really happens in isolation also it's really hard to get funding so it's hard to get funding for something that no one's interested in in the first place that is a very very rushed poor outline of i to home none of

no one who teaches me sees this because i'll be like ophelia why have you explained our profession so badly um but that is a very vague outline of like how research works and the reason i'm including it is just because if you've never been to university how are you supposed to know these things. Academia was just a complete mystery to my family and still is, and it's something i'm still kind of trying to understand and work out. And I think it's hard to imagine yourself doing a job if you don't know it exists or what it means. Even if this just makes one of you excited about doing history, then you know that's great. We've got academics teaching and researching. Then we have the popular side. I think this is a bit clearer by nature, so I kind of have divided this into three categories. First of all is the entertainment edutainment, which are things like historians working with museum exhibition curation in documentaries. We love Mary Beard's documentaries, publishing books that often can be

know if you think about something like the silk roads by Peter Francopan, which I'm so grateful my best friend gave it to me years ago. And like when it first came out, and it really shaped the way that I think about history now, and trying to understand history in a more global way, and trying to put the Middle Ages not just in this like Western Europe in this isolation. But that was because of his book. This was a collection of his academic writings but in a popular way. Historical advisors, TV, film, theater, video games. I know Jackson Crawford was an advisor on Frozen two for the runes, and also maybe Valhalla, the new Assassin's Creed game. I'm pretty sure you might have someone who works with tour guides. All of the things are kind of fun and educational. I think that's a large way that people get a feeling for a period of history, which is why it's really important that it comes from a place that is really well researched because it can be very easy to make these kinds of judgments and then

reinforce how you are different from another period, and that becomes important when you're thinking about contemporary people. So why is the literacy thing important if you're thinking about the medieval period? That's important because today we value literacy and people spelling correctly really highly, like kind of in some ways weirdly highly in comparison to other points of the English language. But it's not just the English language when we have those judgments about the medieval period. Well, they have no literary culture, and their Latin's really bad. That is such a reflection to what we think of as important, rather than thinking of language as something that changes, something that is affected by the surroundings, and the idea that rules are pretty arbitrary. I did this course on complex systems. Part of it was about the ball and cup diagram. Things go from being stable states to unstable states. Ours was on standardized spelling and times in history when we have standardized spelling and rules, and then gradually that changes, and then there becomes a new standard. Things like our judgments about the

medieval period. They impact how we see things today, and we only enforce them if you challenge the ideas. And it's much less controversial, right, because to challenge something about the medieval period, because there's no one from the medieval period alive now, there's no one to be offended. Do you want to come in? Yeah, I was trying to explain why it's important to study the medieval period. What were you saying? I think I should abandon that train of thought quite quickly. Why? I don't know. I think I'm making a good point. I think I'm making it weaker for myself. There's a lot to be said to study the medieval period. Yeah, I know, but I think I'm doing too much in one video. Yeah, I think you could easily do one video on it. So on that, yeah, my point is just that we reflect our own values onto the past, and it is much easier, in my opinion, to change our value judgments about previous periods sometimes than it is to change our value judgments about the contemporary period.

there's this idea of decentering yourself in history. This was a tangent; let's get back on track. Although, thank you to the people who said that they do come for a ramble, I appreciate it. So, that's the educate, edutainment, entertainment, education fun size. Obviously, there are historians who work on education policy and deciding what the correct... have a nice video. Secondly, education policy, so people who decide what the curriculum is, what you have to teach in schools, and finally, people who work in commemoration, which buildings get to be counted as listed buildings, what's a monument that you preserve, what kind of feeling should you have from like, how should you position a statue, where should it be. Obviously, we've talked a lot about statues this last year, but actually, it's been a conversation that's been going on for way, way, way longer than 2020. This was a very broad, quite vague overview of what a historian might do. It's also by no means limited to these things either. I hope this was interesting. Let me know.

if you have any questions, and if you have any video requests, my plan is to try and alternate between one language-related video and one history-related video, but we'll see how that goes. Okay, have a lovely, lovely week. See you very soon. Bye.

what does a historian do? 📜

Ophelia Vert

The Role of a Historian: Theoretical and Practical Perspectives

The video discusses the dual aspects of the historian's role: the theoretical importance of history for society and the practical aspects of the historian's job.

It also explores the debate about the first historian and the teaching of history, while acknowledging the potential for being corrected in the field of history.

The Irving Penguin Books Limited 2000 Libel Case: A Historian's Purpose

The case involved a historian, Irving, being labeled as a dangerous Holocaust denier, which was proven true.

The conversation sparked discussions about the purpose of being a historian, whether it's about being objective, solving present problems with past solutions, or storytelling.

The historian's role was described as helping to understand our present selves in relation to our past selves and as an exercise in empathy, aiming to let go of inherent value judgments.

The Importance of History and the Role of Historians

History plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the world, ourselves, and our societal decisions.

Historians can be divided into academic and public historians, with some, like Mary Beard and Olivette Otele, bridging both areas.

The work of historians involves both teaching, through lectures and classes, and research, with expectations for publishing in academic journals and books.

The Significance of Research on Roman Catacombs and Early Christianity

An archaeologist's study of Roman catacombs and the diet of early Christians provides insight into the social status and conversion to Christianity.

The research not only contributes to the understanding of the grassroots movement of Christianity but also demonstrates the collaboration and inspiration present in academic work.

The significance of seemingly niche research topics and the challenges of obtaining funding for them are also highlighted.

The Impact of Academia on Understanding History

Academia can be a mysterious world for those unfamiliar with it, making it difficult to imagine a career in teaching and research.

The popular side of academia, including edutainment, historical advisors in media, and educational materials, plays a crucial role in shaping public perception of history.

The importance of literacy and language in the medieval period is often misunderstood, reflecting modern judgments and values.

The Importance of Studying the Medieval Period

Studying the medieval period allows us to reflect our values onto the past and is easier to change our judgments about previous eras.

Historians working on education policy and commemoration play a significant role in shaping our understanding of history.

The study of the medieval period is important and continues to be a topic of interest for many.