About

What is "Just In Theory"?

“Just In Theory” (JIT) is the umbrella organization and website hosting and promoting a bundle of projects and initiatives to explore and articulate the links between the complex realms of theory and practice, within and across institutional and non-institutional contexts.

Why is it worthwhile?

Theory and practice often seem to misunderstand, if not overtly ignore each other. The need for explaining theory, illuminating practice, and making these two sorts of efforts mutually beneficial is largely made evident by how rarely scholarly debates are effectively translated into public discourse and social realities, as well as by how easily decision-making dynamics remain caught up in shortsightedness and uncritical thinking. The increasingly complex challenges of our age, coupled with the growing computational capacity offered by digitalization and mass communication, call for a nuanced and multivalent approach to such endeavours. The many ways in which abstract research and concrete action fail to impact each other should accordingly represent a fundamental juncture of every theorist and practitioner's professional development.

Against such a framework, JIT is committed to being both a space for interdisciplinary, intercultural, and inclusive discourse, as well as a launchpad for effective and cooperative action.

JIT’s focus is accordingly set on overarching themes of salient and widespread interest, as well as pressing and emerging selected issues of academic, social, and civic concern (as laid out in JIT's agenda).

Who is involved?

JIT aims at fostering an engaged and collaborative community along three strategic axes:

1. connecting people and gathering input from academics, researchers, activists, and practitioners across fields of interest, disciplines, sectors, and national boundaries;

2. creating easily accessible, approachable, and understandable, cutting-edge multimedia publications to be diffused throughout a variety of widely-used social platforms and institutional fora;

3. build a network of institutional relationships with other research centers, grassroots groups, local communities, Indigenous peoples, universities, think tanks, professional organizations, and so on, in order to undertake long-term collaborations, establish best practices, and work towards JIT’s founding mission.

JIT originated as an informal collaboration among students of McGill Law doctoral program, as the inaugural theme on “Law and Justice” suggests. Collaboration, nonetheless, is and will always be open to interested graduate students, scholars, activists, and practitioners from every background and from all walks of life.

The community's initial efforts may draw on affiliated, parallel, and even independent study groups, clubs, conferences, and events, in order to start building a body of contents to publish as blogs, podcasts, articles, and video essays, as well as to articulate a database of methodological insights and resources that will help to structure the future development of JIT into its flagship projects.

Where is it based?

JIT will be principally developed and maintained through digital means so as to facilitate collaborations across the distance. To that end communication software and sharing technologies will be employed, so as to establish reliable review and editing processes while taking into account and facilitating each participant's capacity to access and use any given digital tool.

However, especially in its initial phases, most of the project’s collaborators are going to be based in Montreal, Canada. The geographical focus of the issues tackled by each project may accordingly tend to concentrate on Quebec and its neighbouring regions, as well as on the places to which JIT's collaborators are otherwise tied. That being said, whenever the circumstances, no spatial limitation will be applied.

JIT finally acknowledges that one of its principal informal headquarters, McGill University (Tiohtiá:ke/Montreal), is situated on the traditional territory of the Kanien’kehà:ka, a place which has long served as a site of meeting and exchange amongst many First Nations including the Kanien’kehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Huron/Wendat, Abenaki, and Anishinaabeg. For this reason, JIT’s members are encouraged to recognize and respect the Kanien’kehà:ka as the traditional custodians of the lands and waters on which they meet today. JIT is committed to supporting the Kanien’kehà:ka and Haudenosaunee Peoples, among other First Nations, Inuit, Métis, and Indigenous Peoples globally, and it aims to do all within its power to involve and engage with Indigenous participants and collaborators as well as to partner with Indigenous communities in research projects that reflect their priorities.