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CV Template · Historian

Historian CV template.

A historian CV needs to show the depth of your research, the credibility of your sources, and the audiences you can reach. Whether you work in academia, museums, archives, publishing, or public history, your CV should make your specialism and evidence-based outputs easy to assess.

Writing a strong Historian CV

Hiring committees, museums, archives, and research organisations look for historians who can handle primary sources, build rigorous arguments, and present findings through publications, exhibitions, lectures, reports, or digital projects. Your CV should foreground your period, region, or thematic expertise, such as medieval Europe, African diaspora history, labour history, or oral history. Include archival collections used, languages, palaeography skills, grant funding, peer-reviewed publications, conference papers, teaching modules, and tools such as Zotero, Omeka, Tropy, ArcGIS, or NVivo where relevant.

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Three things that matter most

  • Name the archives, collections, and source types you have worked with, such as parish registers, court records, newspapers, oral testimonies, manuscripts, or material culture catalogues.
  • Separate publications, conference papers, exhibitions, and public history outputs so academic and non-academic employers can quickly see the kind of historical work you produce.
  • Show technical research methods where relevant, including palaeography, database building, GIS mapping, oral history interviewing, metadata standards, or digital humanities platforms.

Skills hiring managers look for

Archival research Primary source analysis Historiography Oral history methodology Zotero or EndNote Omeka or digital exhibits Palaeography Grant and fellowship applications

Frequently asked

How do I write a Historian CV with no paid historian experience?

Use your dissertation, thesis, archival projects, seminar papers, internships, and volunteer work as evidence of historical practice. Include the research question, sources used, methods applied, and any outputs such as presentations, blog posts, cataloguing work, or public talks.

Should a Historian CV include publications and conference papers?

Yes, especially for academic, research, museum, and policy roles. Create separate sections for peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, reviews, conference papers, invited talks, and public history writing so the reader can distinguish scholarly output from outreach.

What research tools should I mention on a Historian CV?

List tools that support your actual historical workflow, such as Zotero, EndNote, Tropy, Omeka, Transkribus, NVivo, ArcGIS, or archive catalogue systems. If you work with digitised newspapers, oral history recordings, TEI encoding, or metadata standards, include those as well.

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