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. This year’s edition runs over five days in Lille. Two days of Professional Development Workshops are followed by three days of the full conference.
The 2026 theme is “Evaluation for Vibrant Democracies.” The theme responds to challenges of polarization, misinformation, populism, and authoritarianism affecting social, economic, environmental, and political stability. It also places inclusivity, participation and evidence for informed democratic governance at the core of its debates. Click here for full agenda
You can’t afford the evaluation you need. Now what? How to build responsible investment cases from evidence synthesis and impact modelling in climate and gender
Date: Thursday, 29 October 2026
Time: 09:15–10:45 CET | Room 3.3
Solution-focused session | Strand: Evidence for Climate and Environmental Action (E4CA)
Speakers: Constanza Gonzalez Parrao (3ie) and Elise Montano (Caribou)
Funders investing in climate and gender often have to make decisions before context-specific evaluation evidence exists. In practice, evidence synthesis is usually the only realistic basis for those decisions. In this joint session, 3ie and Caribou ask a hard question: how far can findings travel to a new context before an investment case claims more than the evidence supports? 3ie will present its approach to generating and using evidence, drawing on its Sustainable Energy Evidence Gap Map to show what rigorous evidence exists on clean energy and gender. Caribou will then walk through a synthesis on clean energy and women’s economic empowerment in Africa and South Asia. The synthesis moves from more than 100 coded studies to financial modelling and an investment case.
Participants will then work in small groups on a hypothetical proposal to finance solar irrigation for women smallholder farmers. Each group will decide whether to invest, invest with conditions, or wait. The session closes with a set of practical principles for building synthesis-based investment cases responsibly and communicating uncertainty honestly.
Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Methods for Measuring Impact in Democracy Support and Democracy Protection
Date: Friday, 30 October 2026
Time: 09:30–11:00 CET | Room 3.2 A&B
Panel | Strand: Evaluating democracy, governance, and recovery support when the stakes are high
Coordinators: Jörg Faust (DEval) and Marie Gaarder (3ie)
Panellists: Etienne Lwamba (3ie), Anja Neundorf (University of Glasgow), Mascha Rauschenbach (DEval) and Christoph Dworschak (Center for Crisis Early Warning, Bundeswehr University)
Political rights and civic freedoms are being constrained around the world. It is therefore increasingly important to know which efforts to support and protect democracy actually work, and why. This panel looks at how individual experimental and quasi-experimental studies can be combined into synthesis evidence that gives decision-makers more strategic guidance.
Etienne Lwamba will present a decade of 3ie synthesis work on governance and democracy. This includes six evidence gap maps covering nearly 1,900 studies and a recent rapid evidence assessment of 64 evaluations of interventions addressing democratic backsliding. He will highlight where the evidence is strong and where it is missing, particularly on systemic reforms and inclusion. Anja Neundorf will share a meta-analysis of civic education experiments in non-established democracies. Mascha Rauschenbach and Christoph Dworschak will present a meta-analysis comparing how well democracy support works in democracies and in autocracies. An open discussion will follow on how to make rigorous impact evaluation more useful to policymakers and practitioners.
Geospatial (data) and AI for Impact Evaluations
Date: Friday, 30 October 2026
Time: 09:30–11:00 CET | Room 3.3
Panel | Strand: Evidence for Climate and Environmental Action (E4CA)
Speakers: Anca Dumitrescu (3ie) and Julia Girard (Agence française de développement, AFD), with Devika Lakhote (3ie)
This session looks at how new methods can strengthen evaluation’s contribution to climate and environmental policy. 3ie will share examples from its geospatial impact evaluations and show how AI and machine learning are being used in this work. AFD will then present its handbook on geospatial tools and the different ways geospatial data can be used in evaluation.
Attending EES 2026? Come and join us at these sessions. We look forward to seeing you in Lille.