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.

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.

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.