aes26 International Evaluation Conference

Talk to me about evaluation that transforms lives and enables social change. I’m interested in realist, developmental, embedded and responsive evaluation; evaluation in complex education systems; evaluation capacity building; and how we make credible evaluative judgements about things that really matter.

I’m a Senior Evaluator at the NSW Department of Education’s Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, where I work primarily on evaluation in early childhood education. My current work includes theory-driven and contribution-oriented evaluation, program logic, mixed methods, and questions about how Aboriginal governance, knowledge and decision-making authority should shape evaluation.

Before this, I worked for around 20 years in monitoring and evaluation in education and international development, particularly in Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos. From 2016 to 2018 I was Evaluation Adviser for DFAT’s Basic Education Quality and Access in Laos program (BEQUAL), and from 2021 I developed and delivered evaluation capacity building in one of the NSW Department of Education's teacher professional learning innovation teams.

I’m also an Adjunct Research Fellow with Charles Darwin University’s Realist Research Evaluation and Learning Initiative. My current research focuses on realist evaluation and relational mechanisms, particularly the relational mechanisms through which change occurs in groups, institutions and systems. I’m a member of the AES NSW Committee and a co-convenor of the NSW Department of Education’s Evaluation Community of Practice.