EES 2014

[Ratna Mangala Sudarshan]

Back from EES 2014, very much lived up to expectations. A group of us had first gone in 2010 to the EES Conference at Prague and that was part of the process leading to the Engendering Policy through Evaluation project managed by Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST), and to participation in EES 2012 and now EES 2014.  We are pleased to have been part of the Gender Strand started if I’m not wrong, in 2010.  Over these years, we’ve learnt a lot about evaluation approaches and methods and hopefully have also contributed to better understanding of the Indian context. 

This time ISST had organized two panels, and perhaps, the combination of ‘India’ and ‘gender’ made them a bit of a ‘niche’ choice, given the many exciting parallel sessions on at the same time.  We very much valued the feedback and discussion with those who did come to these panels.  Maybe, next time round, the India papers (hoping there would be some) need to be better mixed with others.  The pre-conference workshop on Systems Thinking led by Martin Reynolds was excellent, and very useful for me; enjoyed the keynote by Marco Segone; also one of the education and training sessions (noted though that none of the four papers had given any thought to gender…); insightful paper on relevance by Elias Sagmeister; and ofcourse so much else: grateful for the excellent logistics! 

Here are two photos I could manage to click

[Ranjani K.Murthy]

Dear Ratna 

Some of our observations are similar. System thinking did leave a dent on my mind too, and have some papers from Richard who facilitated the session that I attended.  Yes, we need to position ourselves within the mixed panels in addition to gender strand.  

And .......I had a great time with you. The meal and drink on the boat was special along with Anjali

Best

Ranjani.