The historian in the private sector: Depression, Job Market and Public History

Historians today have faced a new series of threats regarding how they justify what they do. New laws, political discourses and overall diminishing funding for public and private institutional have led to a situation in which is increasingly hard to conduct research and have an academic life. Thus, it is not without reason that cases of depression and psychological problem among undergraduate and graduate students have come to the fore in the public realm. At the same time, historians have also tried to find new ways to justify what they do to society. One of these is public history. Considering this context, this contribution's main goal is to defend the need for a broader discussion on work and work relations regarding the historical discipline. It proposes that undergraduate and graduate courses assume a more active posture regarding the job market, what could be made through the rethinking of historian's professional identity with which public history is engaged to. Therefore, public history has a fundamental role in finding breaches that make it possible to overcome the simultaneous processes of the increase in the cases of depression and the lack of professional perspectives. This could lead to reframe what it is that historians effectively do.