“Evaluation as crossing borders – transgressions in future-oriented evaluation” is the title of the lecture inaugurating the 3rd International Evaluation Congress, which will be conducted by Prof. Leszek Korporowicz.

Leszek Korporowicz, professor at the Faculty of International and Political Studies, Jagiellonian University in Krakow (Poland). The research scope of his numerous publications encompasses sociology of culture, intercultural communication and education, dynamics of personal growth and cultural identity, cultural competence, evaluation. He was a first chairman of the Polish Evaluation Society, representative of Poland in the OECD Education Commission, former rector of the Bogdan Jański College in Warsaw, and an animator of Jagiellonian Cultural Studies, presently realized at the Jagiellonian University.

Within this range of themes, he conducted several series of university lectures abroad, including Denmark, Germany, Australia, Taiwan, Byelorussia and Ukraine.

Main publications include: Creating of Meaning, Language – Culture – Communication (1996), Personality and Communication in Transformative Society (1997), Intercultural Communication, co-editor (1997), Evaluation and Society (2001), Types of reductionism in cultural studies (2002),Cultural Sociology (2011), Bridges of  Hope (2016 ed.), Jagiellonian ideas (2018 ed.)

Professor Helen Simons, PhD, FAcSS, FRSA

Helen Simons is Professor of Education and Evaluation at the University of Southampton, U.K, a past-president of the United Kingdom Evaluation Society (UKES), a Fellow of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences, UK  and of the Royal Society of Arts.

For over thirty years she has specialised in programme, policy and institutional evaluation for government and non-government agencies. She has conducted numerous external evaluations of education and health programmes and directed training programmes in case study research, policy and democratic evaluation in over 25 countries as well as facilitating institutional self-evaluations. She has also written widely about the theory and practice of case study research, qualitative methodology, and the ethics of research and evaluation.  Her 2019 book, Case Study Research in Practice, details how to justify and conduct case study research. Recent papers explore how to generalize from the single case and the role of care ethics in democratic research and evaluation.

Currently researching the role of the creative arts in evaluation/research methodology, she also finds time to explore her own creativity through music, poetry and dance, as well as yoga and meditation.

Prof. Volodymyr Yewtukh – Dragomanov University (Kyiv, Ukraine)

Prof. Wolfgang Meyer – Saarland University Evaluation Center (Germany), German Evaluation Society (DeGEval)

Dr Zenda Ofir – a South African evaluator and scientist with a PhD in Chemistry. She has worked in more than 40 countries, has conducted assignments from local to global level, and has advised many international organisations. She focuses on development, with a special interest in Africa and Asia and on the Global South in general; on the quality and impact of science; on the imprint of humanity on nature; and on how to accelerate progress towards urgent large-scale transformations. A former President of the African Evaluation Association (AfrEA), former Vice-President of the International Organisations for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE) and the International Development Evaluation Association (IDEAS), as well as former Board member of the American Evaluation Association (AEA), Zenda is at present Interim Chair of the Council of the emerging International Evaluation Academy (IEAc). She has been an Honorary Professor at Stellenbosch University and a Fellow of the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin, and has served on the editorial boards of three evaluation journals. She is also a widely read blogger on evaluation, development and transformation. In her early career she was a senior programme manager at a South African science council and later the Director or Research of the University of Pretoria.

Dr Oto Potluka – senior researcher at the Center for Philanthropy Studies, University of Basel (Switzerland). He has studied at the University of Economics Prague, Faculty of Economics and Public Administration. Then, he obtained Ph.D. at the Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences in 2009. Since 2001, his evaluation work relates to the field of regional and economic development, and civil society. He has participated in dozens of Czech and international evaluation, research, and training projects in the field of economic development and the impact of public regulation and public expenditure programs. He has experience with evaluations of public expenditure programs in regional development, especially those co-financed by EU cohesion policy. He has experience from several professional associations. He had been actively working in the board of directors of the Czech Evaluation Society for two terms between the years 2012-2015. Among the other associations belong European Evaluation Society, American Evaluation Association, Czech Economic Association, and Regional Studies Association. As a member of these organizations, he has always actively participated in the building evaluation culture and evaluation capacities.