Date/Time
Date(s) - 25/09/2025
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EES

 

 

Application Deadline: 25 September 2025, by midnight CEST

 

 

The EES biennial conference is the Society’s flagship event, attracting up to 1000 delegates from Europe and globally, to debate, share learnings and engage with state of the art developments in the theory, practice and methodology of evaluation.  Our forthcoming conference will take place in Lille, France from 26-30^th October 2026 (two days of Professional Development Workshops followed by three days of full conference).  The provisional conference theme is “Evaluative Thinking and European Democracy: New Methods, Systems Approaches, and Responsiveness for Successful and Inclusive Policies”.  Our theme responds to the turbulence of these times, riven by polarisation, misinformation, populism, authoritarianism and polycrises that are profoundly affecting social, economic, environmental and political stability.  Our EES conference will bring together thought leaders, practitioners, commissioners and methodological innovators in an event that has inclusivity, participation and evidence for informed democratic governance at the core of its debates.  For this major event, EES is inviting expressions of interest in the role of conference Programme Coordinator.  The Programme Coordinator will be actively supported by the EES Board and, in particular, the Board Conference team.  The work will be facilitated by EES’ Professional Conference Organiser, Kuoni Tumlare who will be responsible for logistic organisation of the event and administrative support.

Tasks

• Together with the EES Board and Board Conference Team, contribute to the selection and invitation of keynote speakers;
• Together with the EES Board and Board Conference Team, liaise with the conference outreach and communications team who will engage the community and encourage widespread support for the event.
• Manage the conference open call for abstracts, including call documentation, identification of peer reviewers, oversight of the abstract selection process. This work will be supported by our Professional Conference Organiser, Kuoni Tumlare who will be responsible for the IT systems and administrative handling of the call and the abstracts.
• Liaise with EES Thematic working Groups (TWGs). It is envisaged that TWGs will have responsibility for dedicated conference thematic strands through an internal ’closed’ call for abstracts (abstracts invited from within the specific thematic area).  Whilst responsibility for review and selection of these abstracts rests primarily with the TWG leadership, the Conference coordinator will communicate regularly with TWGs and provide support where necessary to ensure coherence of their strands with the conference programme overall.
• Following acceptance and confirmation of abstracts for the conference across both the open and closed calls, the coordinator will prepare the conference schedule providing a ‘slot’ for each 1.5 hour session (e.g. panel, fishbowl, individual papers as grouped in threes) across 10-12 parallel slots and across the three full days of the conference. A key challenge of the programming task is to schedule with minimal conflicts of topic, whilst maintaining coherence within strands.  Programming will also require scheduling of keynotes and any other special sessions identified in advance.

Qualifications

• Broad and deep acquaintance with (current) trends and developments in the evaluation community (both methodologically and thematic)
• Ability to manage and drive a group of peer reviewers
• Ability to organise abstracts in a coherent way and build a build a coherent programme
• Good command of English
• Previous experience in event organisation would be an advantage
• An interest in the conference theme and familiarity with associated issues.

The role is pro bono – in common with all members of the EES Board and other volunteers working for the Society, the work be done on a voluntary basis. It will require an important effort, but those of us who have done this task before have found it stimulating, exciting and a very valuable professional experience.  The successful candidates (we envisage a team of ideally two persons) will be co-opted by the EES Board for the duration of the conference preparations.  Whilst we are unable to offer monetary payment, we can offer a substantial complimentary package of conference fee waiver, all travel and accommodation expenses for the conference and two-year membership of EES.

We welcome applications from qualified evaluators who are keen to contribute the development of evaluation through support for this conference.  We will be pleased to receive applications from long experience, mid-range and younger colleagues (yEES!).

Please submit your expression of interest by 25^th September 2025 (by midnight CEST) to secretariat@europeanevaluation.org

Your application should contain:

• A motivation letter, taking into account the above mentioned points
• CV
• Experience with similar exercises
• 2 references

We look forward to receiving your expression of interest!