An exploration of the skills, resources and support people need in order to commission, undertake and use evaluation findings well in complex settings.

Lunchtime Talk: Dione Hills – 15th March

The Centre for Evaluating Complexity across the Nexus (CECAN) is funded by two research councils and four government departments to support the development of policy evaluation methods for use in and across the sectors energy, environment and food. These sectors pose a particular challenge for policy makers and evaluators because the ‘energy trilemma’, loss of biodiversity, climate change, poverty and challenges to health and well being are entangled in a number of complex ways. Figuring out ‘what works’ in these settings often requires input from academics, policy makers and researchers from very diverse backgrounds in terms of practice and theoretical orientations, who may have never previously worked together.

As a partner in CECAN, staff at the Tavistock Institute are involved a number of CECAN related activities, one of which is to develop an evaluation plan for its capacity building activities. Drawing on a broad literature related  culture change, evaluation capacity building, and the translation of knowledge into action, Dione hopes this lunch time talk will be an opportunity to explore what ‘capacity development’ means in the context of complexity and evaluation, what ‘success’ might look like, and how it might be assessed.

Dione Hills is an experienced researcher and evaluator whose career has spanned 30 years developing and implementing innovative evaluation designs at the Tavistock Institute (1986 to present), and a position as senior researcher at the Department of Health (1972-79 and 1984-85). She has particularly specialised in the evaluation of complex interventions, through use of theory based, realistic and contribution analysis evaluation approaches. She has also written a number of theoretical papers and guidance documents related to this, and currently runs evaluation training courses for policy makers and analysts across government departments.

All events take place @ The Tavistock Institute.

Bring your lunch and your expertise with you – hot/cold drinks will be provided. Contact talks@tavinstitute.org if you would like further details of each talk and/or you plan to attend.

You can listen to many of our previous talks here.