Questions about ethics are increasingly recognised as central concerns of evaluation practice, especially in the context of policy and programming that aims to reach marginalised and excluded populations.
Current localisation and decolonisation debates create further momentum for asking difficult questions about who holds power over whom, how this is explored in evaluation, the role of ethical guidelines and procedures, as well as beliefs we hold about how power can be shifted to enable the transformative potential of evaluation. These are not new concerns, however, and for some evaluators conducting evaluations at the margins and with historically marginalised and often racialised communities, questions of whose knowledge counts have always been at the heart of their evidencing practice.
In this hybrid session the editors of the recently published Ethics for Evaluation: Beyond “doing no harm” to “tackling bad” and “doing good” will share the conceptual framework they developed to categorise and explore diverse experiences of ethics in current evaluation practice.
Speakers will reflect from their positionalities as evaluators and commissioners examining questions around who holds the power in an evaluation process and exploring how to build capacity for ethical practice in order to navigate power asymmetries.
Moderator
Marina Apgar, IDS Research Fellow
Speakers
- Rob D. van den Berg, Visiting Professor, King’s College London
- Penny Hawkins, Independent Consultant
- Chris Barnett, ITAD
How to attend
You can attend in person in Room 221 on the second floor of the IDS Building.
Key contacts
