Evaluation is under pressure. Uncertain conditions intensify demands on the field while simultaneously constraining how evaluation is commissioned, managed, and used. Democratic erosion, geopolitical instability, climate emergencies, politicised evidence, and institutional distrust are not background noise — they are the operating environment. The question the field must face is not whether evaluation should be professionalised, but what professionalism means and requires in this environment.

The prevailing view in the Evaluation field emphasises credentialing, technical standards, and evaluator competencies, but this approach is increasingly seen as inadequate. Modern theories argue that professionalism arises from the use of specialised knowledge, ethical and value-based practices, and a social mandate rooted in trust and the common good. Additionally, all participants in evaluation systems, regardless of their role, face constraints beyond their control, such as political, legislative, and historical factors. Professional practice is relational, shaped by mandates, governance, and power dynamics rather than solely by individual behaviour. In evaluation, this suggests that professional quality is co-created across the entire ecosystem.

The strand translates this into a practical argument: ethical, values-based evaluation cannot be realised if the dilemmas confronting those involved in commissioning processes are not acknowledged and addressed at both the individual and collective levels. Professionalism is a shared responsibility, and it requires a shared response.

The strand pursues four objectives:

1. Advance a systemic understanding of evaluation professionalism as a co-produced, relational, and institutional practice, not an individual attribute, that encompasses evaluators, commissioners, managers, and users across the evaluation community

2. Examine how commissioning models and governance arrangements enable or constrain professional judgement, ethical practice, and adaptive learning - and identify the specific structural dilemmas that make systemic commissioning so difficult in practice.

3. Generate practical, contextually grounded action pathways leading to future-fit professionalism - at individual, organisational, and system levels.

4. Articulate future-oriented capacity development needs - reflexive, relational, and institutional - across the evaluation ecosystem, including evaluators, commissioners, and managers operating in complex, contested, and democratically fragile settings.