S15_ Rebalancing Power: Feminist and Decolonial Pathways to Democratic Evaluation
S17_ Evaluators as Actors that Support Vibrant Democracies
S15_ Rebalancing Power: Feminist and Decolonial Pathways to Democratic Evaluation
S17_ Evaluators as Actors that Support Vibrant Democracies
S16_ When the world changes, evaluation must change too: Systems Thinking for changing mindsets, methods, and institutions.
Emanuela Carta, Liliana Olivia Lucaciu
Rationale and Objectives
This strand responds to the EES 2026 conference theme Systemic Learning. Building on the collaborative learning journey undertaken during 2025, including the EES Nonconference, it explores how systems-informed evaluation can strengthen learning and decision making in contexts marked by uncertainty, interdependence, and rapid change.
The strand brings together practitioners, researchers, and policy actors to examine how systems approaches reshape evaluation mindsets, methods, and institutional practices. Rather than treating systems thinking as a standalone toolkit, it emphasises its enactment in practice — working with partial evidence, emergent outcomes, multiple time horizons, participation, power relations, and learning under uncertainty. This focus supports cross-fertilisation across evaluation communities and policy fields.
The strand contributes to:
Theory, by clarifying how systems and complexity perspectives are interpreted and transferred across evaluation practice;
Practice, by sharing concrete experiences and challenges faced by evaluators working in complex and turbulent contexts;
Policy dialogue, by exploring how systems-informed evaluation can strengthen learning-oriented and democratically grounded governance.
For contributors responding under Call B, the strand offers space to share empirical cases, methodological reflections, and practical examples illustrating how evaluation is adapting — or needs to adapt — to complex and changing systems. Strand coordinators from EES TWG8 will collaborate with Call B contributors to foster collaboration between experienced systems practitioners and early-career evaluators.
The strand contributes to:
Theory, by clarifying how systems and complexity perspectives are interpreted and transferred across evaluation practice;
Practice, by sharing concrete experiences and challenges faced by evaluators working in complex and turbulent contexts;
Policy dialogue, by exploring how systems-informed evaluation can strengthen learning-oriented and democratically grounded governance.
For contributors responding under Call B, the strand offers space to share empirical cases, methodological reflections, and practical examples illustrating how evaluation is adapting — or needs to adapt — to complex and changing systems. Strand coordinators from EES TWG8 will collaborate with Call B contributors to foster collaboration between experienced systems practitioners and early-career evaluators.
Strand Overview
The strand proposes five interconnected sessions, complemented by one open session shaped by Call B proposals. Together, they form a coherent narrative on systems-informed evaluation and systemic learning.
The sessions are built on a coherent framework and reflect shared challenges and questions identified through collective reflection across regions, disciplines, and professional roles. Sessions will last between 60 and 90 minutes, will be participatory and reflective, prioritising dialogue, peer exchange, and collective sense-making. Facilitators from EES TWG8 and Call B contributors will co-design sessions, ensuring diversity of perspectives and strong involvement of early-career evaluators. Sessions overview
1 – From systems thinking to evaluation practice
[Jonny Morell, Evaluation & Planning].
Explores the shift from linear evaluation approaches toward systems-informed practice, focusing on how assumptions, judgment, and ways of working change when evidence is partial, outcomes are emergent, and certainty cannot be achieved.
2 – Reframing accountability to enable learning
[Liliana-Olivia Lucaciu. EES-TWG8]
Examines how accountability frameworks shape evaluation design and use in complex policy environments, and how contribution-based and learning-oriented approaches can expand decision space beyond compliance and attribution logics.
3 – Evaluation as sense-making in complex systems under uncertainty
[Kirsten Bording Collins, Adaptive Purpose, EES-TWG8]
Focuses on evaluation as a shared sense-making practice in systems characterised by uncertainty, emergence, unintended effects, and non-linear change. It examines how participation, dialogue, and plural forms of evidence support learning, orientation, and adaptive action.
4 – Shifting evaluation design and commissioning practices under complexity
[Barbara Schmidt-Abbey, EES-TWG8]
Examines how evaluation commissioning, governance, and design practices need to change in response to fast-moving change, slow institutional shifts, and long-term transformation beyond programme and funding cycles. It explores how systems approaches, foresight, and anticipatory practices can be embedded upstream as preparation for uncertainty rather than prediction.
5 – Evaluators as actors within systems of power and learning
[Emanuela Carta, Verian, EES-TWG8]
Explores how power relations, governance arrangements, and institutional constraints shape what is possible in evaluation practice, and how evaluators and commissioners can enable or constrain systemic learning across the policy cycle.
6 – Open session: emerging themes from Call B This session will be shaped by proposals submitted under Call B and provide space to engage with emerging topics, cases, and questions that extend the strand’s focus on systems-informed evaluation and systemic learning.
The sessions are built on a coherent framework and reflect shared challenges and questions identified through collective reflection across regions, disciplines, and professional roles. Sessions will last between 60 and 90 minutes, will be participatory and reflective, prioritising dialogue, peer exchange, and collective sense-making. Facilitators from EES TWG8 and Call B contributors will co-design sessions, ensuring diversity of perspectives and strong involvement of early-career evaluators. Sessions overview
1 – From systems thinking to evaluation practice
[Jonny Morell, Evaluation & Planning].
Explores the shift from linear evaluation approaches toward systems-informed practice, focusing on how assumptions, judgment, and ways of working change when evidence is partial, outcomes are emergent, and certainty cannot be achieved.
2 – Reframing accountability to enable learning
[Liliana-Olivia Lucaciu. EES-TWG8]
Examines how accountability frameworks shape evaluation design and use in complex policy environments, and how contribution-based and learning-oriented approaches can expand decision space beyond compliance and attribution logics.
3 – Evaluation as sense-making in complex systems under uncertainty
[Kirsten Bording Collins, Adaptive Purpose, EES-TWG8]
Focuses on evaluation as a shared sense-making practice in systems characterised by uncertainty, emergence, unintended effects, and non-linear change. It examines how participation, dialogue, and plural forms of evidence support learning, orientation, and adaptive action.
4 – Shifting evaluation design and commissioning practices under complexity
[Barbara Schmidt-Abbey, EES-TWG8]
Examines how evaluation commissioning, governance, and design practices need to change in response to fast-moving change, slow institutional shifts, and long-term transformation beyond programme and funding cycles. It explores how systems approaches, foresight, and anticipatory practices can be embedded upstream as preparation for uncertainty rather than prediction.
5 – Evaluators as actors within systems of power and learning
[Emanuela Carta, Verian, EES-TWG8]
Explores how power relations, governance arrangements, and institutional constraints shape what is possible in evaluation practice, and how evaluators and commissioners can enable or constrain systemic learning across the policy cycle.
6 – Open session: emerging themes from Call B This session will be shaped by proposals submitted under Call B and provide space to engage with emerging topics, cases, and questions that extend the strand’s focus on systems-informed evaluation and systemic learning.
