Evaluation is increasingly conducted in a context of overlapping crises, including democratic erosion, geopolitical instability, climate emergencies, widening inequalities, rapid digitalisation, and declining trust in public institutions. These conditions raise expectations that evaluation will support decision-making, learning, and accountability, while simultaneously constraining the institutional environments in which evaluation is commissioned, managed, and used.

This strand responds directly to the EES 2026 theme Evaluation for Vibrant Democracies by examining how ethics, values, and capacity development can support a future-fit professionalisation of evaluation. It adopts a systemic view of professionalism that extends beyond individual evaluators to include the wider evaluation community—commissioners, managers, educators, and users across government, civil society, philanthropy, and multilateral and UN institutions.

Across these settings, evaluation practice has been shaped by New Public Management logics emphasising linear planning, predefined indicators, and contractual accountability. While these approaches bring structure, they often struggle to address complexity, uncertainty, contested values, and the need for adaptive learning, particularly in fragile or politicised contexts.

Professionalism is therefore understood as a shared and institutional practice, shaped by mandates, governance arrangements, commissioning models, organisational cultures, and power relations. Ethical and values-based practice cannot be sustained by evaluators alone when institutional incentives and management systems constrain professional judgement.

Moving beyond narrow compliance-based approaches, the strand explores adaptive professionalism grounded in ethical sensitivity, reflexivity, systems awareness, and responsiveness to democratic and societal needs, with a focuskkml contexts.

Objectives are to:

1. Re-conceptualise evaluation professionalism as a shared, relational, and systemic practice encompassing all involved in the EC.

2. Identify practical pathways for aligning ethics, values, and capacities such as systems thinking across evaluation design, commissioning, management, capacity development, and use.

3.Examine how commissioning models and governance arrangements enable or constrain professional judgement, ethical practice, and learning.

4.Articulate future-oriented capacity development needs for evaluators and commissioners, including reflexive, relational, and institutional capacities.

5. Generate practical knowledge to strengthen the contribution of evaluation to democratic governance and responsiveness to social needs in conditions of complexity and crisis.

Invitation to Contributors (Call B)

This strand invites conceptual, empirical, and practice‑based contributions that engage with evaluation professionalism. Relevant submissions may include developments in competencies and capacity building for evaluators (including Young Emerging Evaluators), commissioners, and managers.