A group of McMaster anthropology students are resurrecting what was once known as Canada’s premiere graduate student journal of anthropology.

Co-editors Kyle Freund, Laura Lockau and Lelia Watamaniuk posted an online call for papers for Nexus at the beginning of November. It was the first activity on the digital peer-review anthropological journal’s website since the last volume was posted in July 2009.

“There’s a lot of excitement about it,” says Watamaniuk. “It was a very popular journal in its day and we would like to restore it to its former status.”

Nexus was first published as a printed journal in 1975. The publication attracted a variety of graduate student-submitted anthropology articles from both Canadian and international anthropology graduate students. The July 2009 volume, which was the first to be posted online, includes papers on topics ranging from the social, political, and economic causes of violence in Argentine soccer to an analysis of biface technology at British Columbia’s Botanie Lake Dam Site.

Freund has monitored activity on the Nexus website and says the fact that the articles from 2009 have been downloaded thousands of times proves there is a heavy demand for Nexus. He also says graduate students in McMaster University’s Department of Anthropology are well poised to manage the publication because of their range of focus on health, culture, archaeology and past and present human biology.

“This is a Mac-run publication and a point of pride,” says Freund. “We have graduate students with a broad range of knowledge that are able to contribute to the project through submissions or as reviewers.”

The co-editors, who are being advised by Professor Andy Roddick, are hoping to publish a volume with at least eight submissions in time for spring. They have already sent a call for papers to several anthropology departments, and have attended a number of conferences to spread the word about the revival of Nexus.

The publication, along with submission instructions, can be found online.