Congratulations to Victoria van der Haas and Katherine Bishop, Editors in Chief, on their inaugural issue of “COMPASS: The Student Anthropology Journal of Alberta”!
October 16, 2017
Congratulations to Victoria van der Haas (BHAP PhD Candidate) and Katherine Bishop (PhD Candidate), Editors in Chief, on their inaugural issue of COMPASS: The Student Anthropology Journal of Alberta!
Compass aims to navigate its readers through the four exciting fields of Anthropology. Our student journal highlights the exemplary level of academic research in Anthropology at the University of Alberta and elsewhere.
Compass is published annually as collaboration between the Association of Graduate Anthropology Students (AGAS) and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Formerly Diversipede, our student-run publication allows undergraduate and graduate students to share their work and ideas, creating a platform for discussion and knowledge. Submissions consist of original ongoing research, reviews of current anthropological issues, and anything related to an anthropological interest form any of the sub-fields.
Link to Journal: https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/compass/index.php/compass/index
This is the first issue of the long-awaited debut of COMPASS: The Student Anthropology Journal of Alberta. This feature includes undergraduate, MA, and PhD research of students at the University of Alberta, MacEwan University, and the University of British Columbia and spans archaeological, physical anthropology, and medical anthropology-related themes.
Download pdf of Compass here
A Note from the Editors in Chief:
Roughly one year ago Katherine came to Victoria with a proposition to create a student journal. We ended up discussing publishing opportunities and went through our previous experiences. While completing her degrees at Ontario Universities, Katherine was given the opportunity to work on two student journals. She had seen the benefits of students working with the publishing process in a low-stakes environment. Coming from a Dutch University, Victoria never had the opportunity to work with a student journal as it simply was not a practice there, but felt the need and desire to do so. Despite our different backgrounds we both enthusiastically agreed that a student journal would afford students chances to get involved and become better writers.
We set out to create a platform that fosters a less stressful and more hands-on publishing environment for everyone. Although our department already had an Anthropology Journal (Diversipede), it was not well known and all of the previous staff had since graduated. We wanted to give the journal a makeover to be inclusive to all members of our department, bring the journal into an open-access forum to reach a larger audience, and format the process to allow more students to get involved. After months of working with our (at that time) small team of volunteers and library liaison, we had a website, a logo, and a growing interest in publishing our first issue. More volunteers came on board and after months of reviews, copyedits, and formatting later, we are proud to introduce our first issue. We sincerely thank all those who helped bring this issue to fruition, and hope that this is the first of many.
Although this is the "Anthropology Journal of Alberta", we encourage any student to get involved and welcome any who are interested in submitting their work or becoming reviewers. We have paired with Library Services to provide hands-on training for reviewers to learn the ins and outs of the processes and expectations. If you are at a University that does not yet have a student journal, and are similarly interested in creating one, we are more than happy to discuss our experiences with you and provide some tips that worked for us.
We look forward to sharing our first issue and hope to provide possibilities and support for anthropology students. Please consider submitting your own research to COMPASS and reaching the audience it deserves.
Sincerely,
Katherine G. Bishop and Victoria M. van der Haas
(PhD Candidates, University of Alberta)
