What makes someone a historian?

Does someone need academic qualifications to be a historian, and what distinguishes academic from non-academic historians?

No. In this view, a historian applies research and source standards and passes on what they learn. Academic qualifications demonstrate training and matter most for a university teaching career.

Academic status can involve working in an academic institution or holding a qualification that shows training in research standards. Academic historians should, in theory, also have faced rigorous debate. In Alex Clarke's experience, that can begin with the blunt challenge "you're wrong, prove you're not," requiring references and a research record to defend the argument. Within the naval and military history community he knows, academics make up a small share of historians, while non-academics bring differing perspectives and involvement in the subject. They include some of the toughest conference questioners he has encountered, which helps explain his view that qualifications do not determine who counts as a historian. That community's debate can challenge every part of a thesis and state disagreement bluntly, while ruling out personal attacks. Other areas of history have different cultures of debate, so this is an account of experience within naval and military history. Qualifications are most relevant for someone who wants to teach at a university; historical work otherwise depends on research and source standards and passing on what is learned.