How do I say 'I am a professor/PhD' without sounding pretentious, arrogant, and presumptuous?


Okay, so put simply I have a PhD in history and work in academia, and will be
interacting with some other academics in Japan. BUT Japan is not my area of
expertise, my Japanese is a bit limited, and last time I was in Japan I was a
grad student so this was not an issue.

I know I can just refer to other academics politely as sensei generally, but I
was wondering how I should refer to myself accurately while still being
appropriately humble? I've always avoided using that and hakase to refer to
myself on the advise of my teachers. This is a part of Japanese I have always
struggled with and would appreciate any help you can give.

How should I refer to myself/my job in?:

  1. In an academic situation with people who are aware of my specific credentials but are not yet peers (e.g. graduate students)

  2. How should I refer to myself while talking with academic peers? (e.g. other PhDs)

  3. When people who are outside academia but are my peers in age ask what I do for a living (I tend to just use kyoushi in this situation, but is there a more specific term I should use?)

Thank you all in advance.




Jargon aside, people in academia do not use any special language. It's
sufficient to use what is taught as standard business Japanese.

If you're talking about your first-person pronoun, you can stick to わたし
regardless of your gender. It's the safest option in any polite business
conversation, and you can practically forget other options.

If you're talking about how to explain your academic degree to other people,
there is no special convention. Just as a fisherman says 漁師です or a nurse says
看護師です, you can say 歴史学の博士【はくし】です. When explaining your job, you can say
大学の先生です, 博物館の学芸員です, and so on.

Note that はくし is the correct reading of 博士 as an academic degree. はかせ is
another reading of 博士, but it does sound odd or childish in academic fields.
See: [When is 博士 (hakase) used as
honorific?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/82310/5010)

