Date and time: Tuesday 25 November 2025 12.00pm - 1.00pm AEDT
Topic: Do you prefer to dig deep or free range? Evaluator professional identity, collaboration and growth
Location: online via Zoom, details will be shared just prior to the event
Presenter: Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead | University of Connecticut
Facilitator: Amy Gullickson | University of Melbourne
Register online by: 24 November 2025

Event Description

Today’s evaluation ecosystem is complex and ever-evolving. This keynote invites evaluators to reflect on their own professional instincts and locations within the ecosystem: Do you prefer to specialise in a focused area of practice, or do you thrive taking on projects in new areas? Do you have a proclivity for using specific methodologies, or are you methodologically eclectic? Inspired, in part, by story-telling and a popular animal metaphor that is reimagined for our field, this talk explores how evaluators often find themselves embracing one of two dominant frames—deep expertise or expansive expertise—or trying to move between or beyond them. We’ll consider how these orientations and our preferences for them shape our education pathways, influence how we connect with others in the field, and affect how we respond to ecosystem shocks like emerging technologies. This keynote will offer a fresh frame for thinking about professional identity, collaboration, and growth. Along the way, we’ll reflect, maybe laugh, and hopefully walk away with a renewed appreciation for the diverse ways we contribute to a thriving evaluation ecosystem.
This session will be facilitated by A/Prof of Evaluation at University of Melbourne, Amy Gullickson.

Presenter Details

Bianca Montrosse-Moorhead is a Professor of Evaluation at the University of Connecticut, where she also directs the Partnership for Evaluation and Educational Research (PEER) lab. She is currently the Co-Editor-in-Chief of New Directions for Evaluation. She has served as a Board Member of the American Evaluation Association, and co-founded and Chaired the EvalYouth Global Network. Bianca’s research describes what is distinct about evaluation and the work evaluators do. One arm focuses on the boundaries between evaluation and other professions, and the translation of evaluation approaches to practice. A second arm focuses on how we teach others to “think” and “act” like evaluators and to exercise the types of judgment evaluation practice demands. A third arm centers on improving the tools we use in practice, with a recent focus on artificial intelligence. In 2020, Bianca began using open science practices to get her evaluation scholarship out from behind paywalls and into the hands of evaluation practitioners, managers, and commissioners. Bianca’s publications include special issues of evaluation journals, chapters, educational resources for teaching evaluation, evaluation-specific checklists, an R workbook, and several dozen journal articles and evaluation reports. She has led several multi-year process and impact evaluations guided by different evaluation approaches and that used quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. In addition to her university teaching, she has facilitated evaluation workshops in several countries, including Canada, Cote d’Ivoire, Denmark, Greece, Italy, Jamaica, Kenya, and Mexico.

Amy Gullickson is an A/Prof of Evaluation at University of Melbourne. Amy loves teaching, thinking, researching, and doing evaluation. Check out some of her presentations on the AES YouTube channel.

This seminar will be recorded and it will be available on the AES YouTube channel approximately four weeks after the date. We suggest you subscribe to the AES YouTube channel to be notified when new recordings are added.

If there are any additional materials, they will be shared with AES members only. 

This free event has been organised by the VIC Regional Network of the AES. Our seminar series provides an opportunity for you to meet with AES members and others in the evaluation community and to share and learn from the experiences of fellow evaluators. Please ensure you have access to your email address to receive the zoom details.

Session start times:

VIC, NSW, ACT, TAS: 12.00pm

QLD: 11.00am

SA: 11.30am

NT:10.30am

WA: 9.00am

New Zealand: 2.00pm

For other time zones please go to https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Please also check your email address is correct on your registration form before submitting.