aes24 International Evaluation Conference

Welcome to Country & Smoking Ceremony: Wurundjeri Elder Perry Wandin
Opening address: Kiri Parata, President, Australian Evaluation Society

Keynote address: "Wiyi Yani U Thangani - re-imagining evaluation with a gender justice lens"

June Oscar AO

As the first woman to be the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, June led the ground-breaking national project, Wiyi Yani U Thangani (Women’s Voices). In March 2024, the Wiyi Yani U Thangani Institute for First Nations Gender Justice was launched at the Australian National University to carry the legacy of the project—which has gathered a powerful evidence base of the rights, issues and aspirations of thousands of First Nations women and girls.
The Institute is developing an applied measurement, evaluation and learning approach formed by the voices and cultures of First Nations women and girls. This approach will guarantee that women can own their own evidence and identify areas of research which respond to their strengths and priorities. June’s address will explore this unique approach and how evaluation methods shaped by women’s voices can lead to systemic transformation benefiting all Australians.

Professor, International Development, University of Bath, UK

As evaluators, we are often asked to find out ‘what caused what’ in the past, but also resist being labelled solely as hired evidence collectors. I argue for further effort to move beyond ‘what worked?’ to ‘what next?’- from outcome-activity links in the past to scenario-action possibilities and options in the future. Anticipatory evaluation can enhance the relevance and usefulness of our work, but also accentuates the challenges of appropriate framing, causal analysis, normative deliberation, and influencing. It increases uncertainty, recasts stakeholder relationships, and requires use of a wider range of complexity-informed methods. I explore these issues by reflecting on the scope for anticipatory evaluative practice in four diverse fields, each at a different level: planning doctoral research (interpersonal), appraising impact investment (organisational), mainstreaming social policy initiatives (national), and rethinking development (global). Becoming more future-oriented makes new demands on each of us as evaluation professionals, but also requires collective action to build stronger bridges with communities of practice in anticipatory action, appraisal, foresight, and future thinking.