Keynote speakers
Robyn Ober (Australia)
Lead Researcher and Educator, Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education
Robyn is a Mamu/Djirribal woman from Far North Queensland. She is a Lead Researcher and educator at Batchelor Institute and has extensive experience in the Northern Territory that spans three decades. She is well renowned for her expertise of both-ways pedagogy, working to combine Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of knowing, being and learning in teaching practice and research. Robyn’s PhD thesis is titled: Aboriginal English as a Social and Cultural Identity Marker in an Indigenous Tertiary Educational Context. Her educational and research leadership is internationally and nationally recognised and reflected in her numerous consultancies and research on education delivery, both-ways education, social linguistics and Indigenous research methodologies in the Northern Territory, national and international Indigenous educational contexts.
Lígia Teixeira (UK)
Founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Homelessness Impact
Dr Lígia Teixeira is the Founder and Chief Executive of the Centre for Homelessness Impact , part of the UK Government’s What Works Network. She works with governments and cities to rethink how homelessness is understood and addressed – using data, evidence, and experimentation to drive better outcomes. Her work advances a new approach to “what works” in complex systems, combining rigorous evaluation with a systems lens. Without this, services can improve in isolation while outcomes at population level continue to worsen. Bridging academia, policy, and practice, Lígia has led the design of the UK’s first homelessness prevention framework and the government’s first systems-wide evaluation and test-and-learn programme in England. She supports leaders to embed evidence and systems thinking into decision-making, shifting the focus from managing crisis to preventing it. She works across all levels of government, alongside funders and system leaders, to ensure decisions are driven by impact rather than intention – to help shift effort upstream and turn ambition into measurable results.
Bagele Chilisa (Botswana)
Professor of the Post Graduate Research and Evaluation Programme, University of Botswana
Bagele [Med, MA EdD (Research Design, Measurement, Statistics and Evaluation)] is a globally recognised scholar and a leading African thought leader who has written extensively on decolonizing research and evaluation methodologies. She currently drives the thinking on a Fifth research and evaluation Paradigm centering relationality, connectedness and spirituality in research and evaluation practice. Over the last 30 years, she has taught Research design, Measurement, and Evaluation courses to graduate and undergraduate students. She has served as Director of several grant funded projects and a member of the UNDP evaluation advisory board, IFAD evaluation advisory board, and a member of the International Evaluation Council. With over 80 publications, she has received multiple grants to conduct research and design interventions to address gender inequalities, power asymmetries and epistemic violence in development projects in Botswana and beyond. Her book, Indigenous Research Methodologies, drives thinking on a fifth paradigm and the integration of knowledge systems used at many universities worldwide. She has served as a guest lecturer, speaker, resource person, and keynote speaker at several international Universities and conferences. She also conducts professional development workshops on indigenous research methodologies and on contextually and culturally relevant evaluation worldwide. She is the recipient of multiple national and international awards.Selwyn Button (Australia)
Commissioner, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Stream, Australian Productivity Commission
Selwyn Button was appointed for a 5-year term as a full time Commissioner in June 2024. Selwyn is Gungarri man from Southwest Queensland and an experienced leader of health, education and governance organisations across the public, private, not-for-profit and community-controlled sectors. Prior to joining the Commission, Selwyn was partner of PwC Indigenous Consulting; national Registrar of the Office of the Registrar for Indigenous Corporations, the Assistant Director-General for Indigenous Education in Queensland, Chief Executive Officer of the Queensland Aboriginal and Islander Health Council, and Chair of the Lowitja Institute. Selwyn has led major policy, service delivery, governance and legislative reforms in his various leadership roles and has significant contributions through his service as a board member of numerous sporting, arts, culture, health and early childhood education and care organisations. He was a former primary school teacher and Queensland police officer. Selwyn is currently working on the Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement Review inquiry and co-leads the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stream of work at the PC.Emily Gates (USA)
Associate Professor of Evaluation, Boston College
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.
Being comfortable with discomfort
Robyn Ober (Opening Keynote Speaker)
Wednesday 16 September, 9.00am - 10.30am Hall 2, Plenary
This keynote challenges evaluators and commissioners to get comfortable with discomfort, and to rethink what ethical, rigorous evaluation looks like when it happens on Country.
Responding to the aes26 theme Making Space, Valuing Place, Dr Robyn Ober draws on three decades of practice in Aboriginal communities to show how traditional knowledge systems and contemporary evaluation can work together. Through vivid stories from remote and very remote contexts, the talk brings to life the tensions at the heart of evaluation practice: timelines versus relationships, control versus trust, and methodological neatness versus lived reality. At the centre is the Community Researcher Approach, where local people are co-researchers who shape the questions in collaboration with evaluators, lead conversations in language, and make meaning on their own terms.
The talk argues that ethics and integrity are enacted in how we show up, who holds authority, and whether participants’ voices are recognised, respected and valued so they feel safe to share their own truths. Integrity is also enacted when Aboriginal people can see that the purpose of evaluation is for the benefit of Aboriginal people. You’ll leave with practical ways to commission and conduct evaluation on Country to strengthen voice, evidence quality and impact.
From evidence to impact: reclaiming evaluation as a means to an end
Lígia Teixeira
Wednesday 16 September, 1.30pm - 2.30pm Hall 2, Plenary
This keynote argues for renewed focus on evaluation as a discipline of impact. Drawing on international efforts to tackle homelessness, it explores how outcomes are shaped not by individual interventions alone, but by the systems in which they operate. Without a systems lens, even strong and diverse forms of evidence – quantitative, qualitative and lived - can lead to fragmented action, missing the broader dynamics that ultimately determine success.
The keynote reflects on how evaluation can better connect global insight with local context, enabling faster learning while respecting place-based realities. It also argues that effective systems prevent harm before it occurs, rather than responding once it is entrenched.
This is a call to re-centre evaluation on its core purpose: not just to understand the world, but to change it.
Making Space, Valuing Place: The 21st Century Evaluation Paradigms Challenge
Bagele Chilisa
Thursday 17 September, 9.00am - 10.00am Hall 2, Plenary
Evaluation systems are under pressure to deliver credible evidence that strengthens decisions, responds to place and context, and envisions the future. This talk invites us to improve policy effectiveness by bringing established Western evaluation approaches into dialogue with other knowledge systems, including place and space based paradigms of formerly colonised Peoples of the world. Paradigms help navigate dialogue on power distribution and how to amplify power for communities, address relationships and rights of Indigenous Peoples to their land and culture and navigate the complexity of context.
The People, Environment, Place, Space, and Time (PEPST) framework, derived from an Indigenous Science paradigm, is presented as a practical tool to enrich evaluation design and use. PEPST challenges decision makers to contextualise evaluation and check whether commissioning, governance, timelines, and success metrics narrow what counts as evidence. PEPST strengthens policy intelligence by centring Indigenous authority, while acknowledging institutional requirements.
This talk explores what changes when PEPST informs how evaluations are commissioned, governed, and used across development programs. It shows how the PEPST framework might connect traditional and new ways of evaluation, strengthen ethics and integrity in evidence making, and build durable bridges between Indigenous knowledge systems and multiple accountability requirements in evaluations.
Insight that Delivers: How Good Evaluation Shapes Better Policy and Practice
Selwyn Button
Friday 18 September 9.00am - 10.00am Hall 2, Plenary
Good evaluation does more than measure outcomes or meet accountability requirements — it helps shape better public policy and improve practice across government and community sectors. In a context of increasing complexity, constrained resources, and rising expectations, evaluation provides critical evidence to inform decision-making, strengthen services, and improve outcomes for communities.This keynote explores how evaluation can move beyond compliance to become a practical tool for learning, adaptation, and system improvement. Drawing on examples of formal and informal evaluation processes from the Productivity Commission, community-controlled health organisations, government departments and consulting experiences, the session will examine how evaluation helps organisations understand what works, for whom, and under what conditions.The keynote will also reflect on the realities faced by public servants and community organisations, including balancing evidence with operational pressures, engaging stakeholders meaningfully, and translating findings into action. Effective evaluation strengthens accountability, informs investment decisions, and supports more responsive, equitable, and impactful services.
When “What’s Right” is Contested: Ethical Reflexivity in Systemic Change
Emily Gates (Closing Plenary)
Friday 18 September 2.30pm - 3.30pm Hall 2, Plenary
Ethics in evaluation is often treated as a matter of personal values, organisational commitments, or compliance with professional guidelines. But in systemic change, ethics becomes an ongoing, relational practice that asks us to hold space for hard questions and disagreement about “what’s right.”
In this session, we’ll make space for diverse perspectives and value the contexts and communities in which evaluation happens. We’ll practice ethical reflexivity together using photos, comics, and other visual moments from real evaluation work to explore:
• How our roles change when we evaluate systems instead of programs, and how we decide what responsible involvement looks like.
• How we navigate values, perspectives, and power, while avoiding the reproduction of unjust dynamics.
• How to assess “success” when outcomes are emergent, contributions are multi directional, and interpretations differ.
At its heart, this session sharpens the questions we ask of ourselves and each other, strengthening the ethical reflexivity needed to act with integrity when “what’s right” is genuinely contested.
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We acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands in which we conduct our 2026 conference, the Larrakia peoples. We pay our respects to the ancestors and Elders, past and present, of all Australia’s Indigenous peoples. We are committed to honouring Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and seas and their rich contribution to society.
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