Public Historian

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There are two categories of public historians. The first, and most widely understood definition of a public historian is a practitioner of public history. This definition holds that public historians are generally regarded as those people who create history for public consumption; history as digested outside of the academy. Their work can take place in various locations and formats, including museums, historic sites, films, and books.

Generally speaking, then, the difference between a historian and a public historian pertains to audience. In the first case, public historians aim to educate and engage the [[public]] through history; historians, on the other hand, generally speak to an academic audience, and not the general public. Public history has received a boost in popularity over the past thirty years, which has resulted in the development of the second form of public history practice.

This second definition of public historians has to do with those historians who, within the academy, study the public consumption of history.