Feminist Issues in Evaluation TIG Reminder: AEA Call Proposals - Only 5 Days Left!

[Jane Whynot]

Greetings Colleagues!

It's difficult to believe that the deadline for submissions to AEA's conference is only 5 days away!. The Feminist Issues in Evaluation Topical Interest Group (TIG) is planning our 2018 proposal strategy for the AEA conference which will be held in Cleveland, Ohio from October 28^th through November 3^rd 2018. The submission deadline is March 15^th 2018.  The TIG is hoping to build on last year’s record number of submissions and would encourage you to share your exciting projects, methodologies and other activities. Please consider submitting a proposal.

This year’s theme is on “Speaking Truth to Power”. AEA has identified the following questions to help develop proposals:

• What responsibilities do we have as evaluators for Speaking Truth to Power? When? In what contexts or situations? With what consequences? At what risk or cost? To whom, with what expectations?
• What is power? Who has it, and how can they best be influenced? What is the power held by evaluators and evaluation?
• What is truth? Whose truth? How can we best discover these truths?
• And, what is speaking? Whispering? Public pronouncements? Influence? Activism? And by whom on behalf of whom?

The conference website lists the following kinds of sessions: panel discussions, expert lectures, roundtables, skill building workshops, ignite sessions, birds of a feather gatherings, and a new flexible session type that allows for experiential learning. Find details and submit your proposal at: http://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=602 .

If you are interested in presenting a paper you could either submit individual proposals, which AEA would then assign to whichever session they felt was appropriate, or you could consider working with at least two other colleagues to put together a panel for a 45 or 60 minute session.  While a panel session requires more organization, it has the advantage that you can ensure that the whole session will focus on the issues in which you are interested.  The risk of submitting an individual paper is that it can sometimes get “lost” by being combined with other papers that are addressing different topics.

If you would like to consider a panel, but you have not identified other presenters, we can try to help you find other colleagues who might like to join with you.  Please also let us know if you have ideas for a panel or other kind of session, but are not quite sure how to put this together, please send us your ideas and we can work with you on a plan.  In any case, we would appreciate it if you could let us know if you are planning a submission, both so that we can provide any support you might need, but also so that we can ensure coordination among all of the different submissions from TIG members so that we can present a strong and well-articulated package of proposals. The proposal submission is very competitive and there is no guarantee that your proposals will be accepted. 

In addition to the above options please feel free to be creative and to consider all of the different options that AEA provides. The TIG is also strengthening its cooperation with other TIGs, so you are also encouraged to consider joint proposals with colleagues from other TIGs.

So please let us know if you are interested in considering a submission and also how we can help. For help with the preparation of your proposals, and to keep the TIG in the loop please contact [e-mail] .

Please consider volunteering to serve as a peer-reviewer for our TIG. It is a great way to get involved with the TIG and help to ensure that we put our best foot forward at the conference. To volunteer please either (1) Contact Christine Bell at [e-mail] or reply to this email by Thursday March 15th or (2) select our TIG as one for which you’d like to serve as a reviewer when you submit your own proposal through the AEA website.

Please note, AEA does provide international travel grants to support attending the conference but there is no guarantee that conference submissions will receive one. Additional information on the grants and eligibility criteria can be found at this link : http://www.eval.org/p/cm/ld/fid=242 . The Feminist Issues in Evaluation does not award travel grants.

Looking forward to hearing from you and to putting together a really strong Feminist TIG program for AEA2018. See you in Cleveland this fall!

Program Co-chairs,

Christine Fabian Bell, and Jane Whynot

[Rituu B Nanda]

Thanks for sharing Jane. I have also posted on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/EngenderingPolicyThroughEvaluation/

Warm greetings!