Please join us for Partnerships for Transformative Change in Challenging Political Contexts with Donna Mertens. 

This brown bag will be held on Tuesday, January 24 from 12:15-1:45p.m. at Carr Workplaces (1701 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, 2nd Floor). 

This event includes both in-person and dial-in attendance. When registering, please indicate if you plan on attending in person or via phone. As in-person attendance is limited, please register only if you are certain that you can attend. In-person attendance is free to members and non-members. 

As a benefit to WE members, dial-in registration is also free. For members: please log in with your username and password (upper-right hand corner of the website) to easily register. This is necessary if you'd like to take advantage of the free dial-in number, which will be sent in a follow-up email. 

Partnerships for Transformative Change in Challenging Political Contexts

Chile experienced severe human rights oppression under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. The younger generation is aware of the legacy of the oppression in terms of the disappearance of people who spoke out against the government. Yet, they have developed a strong will to work for change in their country and they believe that a transformative approach to evaluation is useful to this end. We worked together to marshal resources from the US State Department Fulbright Specialist Program, the University of Santiago, and the American Evaluation Association’s International Partnership Program to support training programs in Chile in transformative evaluation. In this presentation, I will discuss the logistics of building these partnerships and the process and substance of the training that occurred as part of this collaborative effort.

Presenters

Mertens is Professor Emeritus at Gallaudet University with a specialization in research and evaluation methodologies designed to support social transformation. She has authored, co-authored, or edited over 15 books relate to research and evaluation methods and human rights, most recently Research and Evaluation in Education and Psychology: Integrating Diversity with Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods, Indigenous Pathways into Social Research, Program Evaluation Theory and Practice, and Transformative Research and Evaluation. Her scholarly work focuses on the intersection of research and evaluation with social justice and human rights and is situated within the philosophical assumptions of the transformative paradigm. She taught MA and PhD hearing and deaf students in education, psychology, social work, administration, and international development for 32 years. She has conducted professional development related to transformative mixed methods in many contexts, e.g., the Australasian Evaluation Society in Australia and New Zealand; the African Evaluation Association in South Africa, Niger, and Ghana; the Grupo de Institutos, Fundações e Empresas in Brazil; the World Bank and the Community of Evaluators in India and Nepal; the Sri Lankan Evaluation Association in Sri Lanka; UN Women and Evaluation Partners in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Mertens also served as the Editor for the Journal of Mixed Methods Research 2010-2014.

Please RSVP in advance, so we know how many attendees to expect.