As our political and epistemic contexts become ever more complex, the evaluation field and those who practice it must find a way to keep up. The C2027 Conference Committee is very pleased to announce our conference theme, designed to do just this: Expanding Evaluation!
Join us at the 2027 National CES Conference as we embark on an inspiring journey into the world of evaluation. Our theme, "Expanding Evaluation: Diverse Voices, Broader Methods, and Real-World Impact," invites us to delve deeper into what it means to conduct meaningful, impactful evaluation work. Get ready to submit your presentation proposals; the proposal system will open on November 9, 2026.
Evaluation is a diverse field filled with people bringing all kinds of backgrounds, experiences, and ways of working. As the field continues to evolve and grapple with complex programs and realities, we need to expand how we think of evaluation by encouraging greater interweaving of paradigms, concepts, and methods in ways that respect the integrity and protocols of each; we also need to draw on specialized expertise both within and outside of our community. That means actively working with program designers, project funders, subject matter experts, communities in which programs/services are being delivered, whose priorities those programs/services should reflect, and with individual participants/service users. By doing so, we can share expertise and tackle challenges together.
A more inclusive and cross-disciplinary understanding of ‘evaluation’ also raises critical questions: who does evaluation and how do they do it? It further sharpens concerns about who decides what is “evaluation,” and who determines whether evaluations are “good” in various contexts. Addressing these questions continues to be an ongoing challenge within professionalization, and it is not one for evaluators to settle alone.
In a nutshell: expansion and evolution can sharpen rather than settle the big questions facing evaluators and those we serve. Who are we as evaluation professionals? What counts as ‘quality’ evaluation? What theories guide our work, and why? What purposes does evaluation really serve?
C2027 invites delegates to work out together what is integral for the renewal and transformation of evaluation for it to have a distinct positive role and impact in society.
The C2027 conference will tackle these questions through three sub-themes:
Sub-theme 1: Expanded Evaluation Community: Who Makes Up Evaluation
This sub-theme explores who makes up the evaluation community today, including evaluators, commissioners, funders, users of evaluation, area specialists and the roles they all play. We will look at how different careers, educational paths, and job titles shape the way we work,; and address the influence of systemic power and privilege on our community, including the barriers and pathways that shape who undertakes evaluations and why. Discussions will focus on building partnerships across professions; identifying new competencies and skills evaluators need, and which existing skills remain distinctly “ours”; and exploring how our field continues to evolve to cultivate and serve an expanded evaluation community. We also welcome perspectives from those who commission, fund, and use evaluation; these voices are critical to the community’s growth.
Sub-theme 2: Broader Methods: Rethinking Evidence and Tools
Evaluation is integrating more techniques from related fields like data science, audit, research, and performance measurement, and a broader range of culturally responsive and Indigenous ways of knowing. This sub-theme looks at where evaluation ends and other disciplines begin, giving us a chance to explore new tools, test hybrid methods, and rethink how evidence is commissioned, resourced, conceptualized and conducted, and by whom. For some communities, decades of “evidence” have not worked; this sub-theme asks whose evidence counts, whose ways of knowing are privileged, and who governs the data.
Sub-theme 3: Real-World Impact: Making Evaluation Matter
Here, we look more closely at the mutual contributions of evaluation and evaluative thinking to organizations and public policy. This is where the first two sub-themes are put to the test: an expanded community and a broader toolkit are valued when they produce evaluations that better guide decision-making, improve accountability, and drive learning. We will share how evaluation and evaluative thinking can offer balanced, reciprocal benefits to commissioners, evaluands, the communities and rightsholders they are meant to serve, for the greater community, and the public good. We also want to understand the political, institutional and paradigmatic conditions that help or hinder evaluation being used by those it is meant to benefit. We particularly encourage examples of evaluation’s contributions to ecological and social justice, Indigenous sovereignty and Nation building, and the rights and well-being of persons, Peoples and all of Nature, including cases where expansion helped, and cases where it may have presented challenges.