What Researchers and Institutions Say About Our Programs
Accounts from graduate scholars, independent researchers, and academic departments who have completed programs at the Institute.
← Return to HomeI joined the seminar series while writing the comparative chapter of my dissertation. What surprised me was how the sessions treated primary source location as a skill in its own right — not just a research step to rush past. The reading lists were genuinely useful, and the discussion periods let me raise questions that were specific to my work rather than generic.
The writing program did something I didn't expect — it helped me see where my argument was actually going wrong structurally, not just where the citations were off. Getting written feedback on two separate drafts meant I could implement changes between sessions and actually see whether they worked. Worth the eight weeks without question.
I completed the seminar series while finishing a master's thesis that drew on both common law and civil law material. The methodology the sessions laid out for evaluating sources across systems was directly useful. I would have benefited from a slightly longer discussion period in some sessions, but the reading lists were excellent and I still reference the session summaries.
I enrolled in the writing program with a paper that I knew had structural problems but couldn't diagnose on my own. The feedback on the first draft identified exactly where the argument lost coherence. By the second draft the comments were much more granular, which felt like the right progression. The citation style sheet has been useful well beyond the program itself.
The seminar series is one of the few public forums I know of in Canada where researchers from different disciplines and career stages work through comparative methodology together. Sessions were well-prepared and the facilitators were willing to engage with unusual source questions that don't fit the textbook examples. Solid value for the fee.
As a visiting scholar from outside Canada, the writing program gave me a very clear picture of how to adapt my citation practices to the journals I was targeting here. The module on handling translated sources was particularly useful — it is not something I have seen covered systematically elsewhere. The group being capped at fifteen made the workshop discussions substantive.
A university-affiliated research centre in Ontario was producing two journal issues per year but experiencing consistent delays between submission and final publication. The editorial team had no written process, and different editors handled the review stage differently, creating unpredictable timelines for submitting authors.
Over ten weeks, we mapped the existing process through interviews with the editorial team and analysed a sample of recent submissions to identify where delays were concentrated. We produced a written editorial process document, a template pack covering submission acknowledgement, reviewer instructions, and author revision requests, and trained the team on the new workflow.
The centre completed its next publication cycle with a measurably shorter review stage and reported fewer editorial handover problems between team members. The process document was adapted by the centre to cover a new online supplement launched six months later.
"The discovery phase alone was more useful than we expected — it gave us a concrete picture of where time was actually going, rather than the vague sense we had before. The templates have become part of how we work."
A graduate student at a western Canadian university had drafted a paper drawing on documents from three treaty bodies and academic commentary from both English and French-language sources. Two earlier submission attempts had been rejected at desk review, with reviewers noting inconsistent citation and unclear argument structure.
The student enrolled in the eight-week writing program. The first-draft feedback identified the argument structure problem — the paper was leading with secondary commentary instead of its primary source findings. The second round addressed citation consistency and the submission package was assembled at the end of week eight.
The revised paper was accepted for publication by a peer-reviewed comparative law journal after one round of revisions. The student noted that the citation style sheet was still in active use when they contacted us six months later.
"I had been trying to fix the citation problems without realising the structure was the real issue. The feedback on draft one made that clear quickly, and the second round of comments was much more granular. The paper is published and I'm registered for the next seminar cycle."
A public policy analyst working outside academia wanted to build a more systematic understanding of how international institutions produce and classify their documentation, in order to use it more reliably in policy briefs. They enrolled in the seminar series without prior formal training in law or legal research.
The series ran over six monthly sessions covering institutional structure, source location, source evaluation, comparative method, secondary literature, and synthesis. The participant attended all six sessions and contributed consistently to the discussion periods, raising questions rooted in their experience with policy document analysis.
The participant reported that the sessions gave them a clearer framework for assessing whether a document they encountered in their work was primary or secondary, and for identifying when a secondary source was accurately representing the original. They have since enrolled in the writing program.
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