About me
Emily Gates is a tenured associate professor at Boston College whose research explores how evaluation can support meaningful, values-driven change in complex systems. Her work bridges theory and practice, spanning more than 30 publications and two coauthored books: Evaluative Inquiry for Systemic Change (2025, with Pablo Vidueira) and Evaluating and Valuing in Social Research (2021, with Thomas Schwandt). In 2023, she received the American Evaluation Association’s Marcia Guttentag Promising New Evaluator Award, recognizing her research on systems thinking, values, and equity in evaluation practice. Since 2012, she has worked primarily in the public sector, focusing on mixed methods and democratic evaluations in STEM education and public health. She holds a PhD from the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign and is a former evaluation fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She lives in Boston with her family and will spend a sabbatical year in Australia and New Zealand in 2026–2027.
