The Centre for Multicultural Program Evaluation works with a group of partners, including Monash University, Deakin University, AMES, ARTD and the Kinnect Group and a network of experts, allies, subcontractors and affiliates.
We collaborate with the Social Research Centre as needed to undertake research design, survey management, statistical consulting, qualitative research, data science applications, analysis, and reporting, depending on the size of the project.
We also collaborate with Polaron Language Services as needed and we recruit and remunerate community leaders on a project by project basis to enable their participation at all stages of the evaluation and research lifecycles-problem identification, theory development and testing, data collection and analysis, program design and service delivery.
The Centre for Multicultural Program Evaluation with its partners, offers agility, complementary knowledge, expertise and skills from the perspectives of professionals working in population analysis; qualitative analysis; theory of change design and development; economic analysis; civic participation, program design, development and delivery; action research; monitoring and evaluation; evaluation and research capacity building and evidence-based policy design and development.
Professional Evaluators and Associate Consultants
Andrew Hawkins
Andrew is a specialist in strategic monitoring and evaluation, program logic and evaluation methodology. Andrew’s strength lies in delivering credible and useful evidence for decision-making. This springs from his commitment to understanding the needs of his clients, and the nature of evidence in complex systems, including the appropriate use of experimental, quasi-experimental, realist and other methods for testing program theory.Andrew believes that evaluation is a constant process of seeking evidence to support decision making that is relevant to program design and its implementation as well as the monitoring and measurement of outcomes. He draws on a 20 year background in public administration, psychology, statistics, administrative law and applied behaviour change theory. He uses a realist lens and empirical analysis to evaluate the adequacy of program design, monitor performance and conduct comprehensive evaluations to help clients understand how interventions work, and how they may be improved to achieve strategic objectives.
He has provided advice to agencies across the public and not-for-profit policy spectrum on contemporary methods for conducting evaluation—including in 2015 when he co-authored Choosing appropriate designs and methods for impact evaluation with Professor Patricia Rogers RMIT for the Office of the Chief Economist, Department of Industry and Science. He is currently providing advice to the Australian Department of Social Service on their ‘Evaluation Readiness’ Service. He is also working with other Australian Departments, including Prime Minister and Cabinet, Employment, Infrastructure, Immigration and Border Protection, Industry, Innovation and Science. He also works for NSW Government agencies and NGOs, both small and large on social policy and the intersection between government and industry.
Andrew was Chair of the AES Realist Evaluation Special Interest Group from 2014-2018 and is an honorary fellow with Charles Darwin University’s Northern Institute where he regularly collaborates with international realist expert Professor Gill Westhorp. He published Realist evaluation and randomised controlled trials for testing program theory in complex social systems and was a contributor to RAMESES II reporting standards for realist evaluations. In 2014, he led the team that won the Australasian Evaluation Society’s (AES) award for Best Public Sector Evaluation.
Qualifications: Masters of Administrative Law and Public Policy (2007, University of Sydney); Bachelor of Arts, Psychology (Hons) (2000, University of Sydney)
See http://artd.com.au for more details including a CV.
Andrew Hawkins
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Dr Brad Astbury (PhD)
Brad has deep expertise in leading multidisciplinary teams, engaging stakeholders and combining multiple forms of evidence to improve both the quality and utility of evaluation. He has managed and conducted organisational reviews, needs assessments, process and impact studies and theory-driven evaluations across a wide range of policy areas for industry, government, community and not-for-profit clients.Brad has over 18 years of experience in evaluation and applied social research. Prior to joining ARTD, Brad worked for over a decade at the University of Melbourne, where he taught and mentored postgraduate evaluation students studying for the Masters of Evaluation. Brad was instrumental in developing this course, which is the only one of its kind in Australasia. He maintains an honorary fellow position at the University. From 2013 to 2016 he was appointed as a part-time Senior Research Fellow at Deakin University, School of Population Health to consult on a large ARC linkage grant examining co-design approaches to optimise health literacy.
Brad is an excellent communicator who is able to explain and translate complex ideas for diverse audiences. He has extensive experience conducting and facilitating workshops, seminars and professional development activities – training staff in evaluation approaches and data collection techniques. Many of these engagements have involved longer term work to develop monitoring and evaluation frameworks, build internal evaluation capacity, and prepare in-house research and evaluation toolkits.
Brad has published widely in top-ranked evaluation journals such as the American Journal of Evaluation, Evaluation and Advances in Evaluation book series. He is a recognised international leader in the development of innovative approaches to advance evaluation theory, methodology and practice.
He is a current member of the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) and the American Evaluation Association (AEA)
Qualifications: Master of Assessment and Evaluation, (2011, University of Melbourne); Bachelor of Arts (Criminal Justice), (2000, RMIT University).
See http://www.artd.com.au for more details including a CV.
Dr Brad Astbury (PhD)
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David Roberts
David Roberts (MAsEval, BA.(Hons), QPR) is a self-employed consultant with over 35 years experience in evaluations. His evaluation experience encompasses a wide range of approaches and methods across diverse fields (e.g. health, education, counter-terrorism, project evaluations and organisational systems). In 2016, David was awarded the Ros Hurworth Prize for Best Conference Paper at the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES) Conference in Perth, Australia.He is highly regarded in the evaluation profession and has held evaluation leadership positions in Australia and internationally. He is currently a Board member of the International Organization for Collaborative Outcome Management (IOCOM) and is on two AES committees.
From 2012 to 2014, David was President of the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES), a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Organisation for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE) and a member of the Management Group of EvalPartners, an international collaboration of United Nations agencies, governments and evaluation societies. Other positions include Chair of the AES Awards Committee, Chair of the ACT Health Advisory Committee and Steering Committee, Hospital in the Home Evaluation, Canberra Hospital (1997-98)
David has training in Anthropology, Evaluation and Community Development. He has a Masters of Assessment and Evaluation. His thesis examined how cognitive structures inform and drive participant responses to elicitation (or projective) techniques. David has conducted workshops for over 30 years in areas such as Community Engagement, Participatory Research, Evaluation Design, Elicitation Techniques, Qualitative Methods and Program TheoryMAsEval, BA.(Hons), QPR) .
David Roberts
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Kate McKegg
Kate McKegg Kate is one of the pre-eminent practitioners and trainers of Developmental Evaluation1 in the Southern Hemisphere. Kate has over 25 years’ experience in evaluation, research, organisational development, policy development, leadership and strategy. The focus of much of her evaluation work is the development of evaluation capacity, supporting government and non-government clients to build evaluation frameworks and systems. The Kinnect Group works at the cutting edge of evaluation practice and theory. They work in challenging spaces of complexity, innovation and ambiguity using complexity and systems thinking approaches, logic models, theory of change and outcome frameworks.The Kinnect Group collectively has decades of experience developing and applying logic models (as well as other modelling approaches), evaluation specific methodology, rubrics, evaluation plans and frameworks for small community-based initiatives, medium sized programmes as well as large complex programmes and initiatives, as well as for strategy.
Kate McKegg
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Eva Sarr
Eva Sarr is an indigenous Serer woman from Sene-Gambia, in West Africa. She is also a 6th generation Australian woman of indigenous Celtic–Scottish and Irish–descent. Her father was Muslim and her mother, Catholic. She was raised in Global South nations in Asia, Africa, and the Pacific by her mother, who worked as a Peace Corps Medical Officer. Eva is a mixed methods evaluator with 15 years of experience. She has worked internationally, with Indigenous Australians and with Australia’s State and Federal governments and the Not-for-Profit sector in Australia, as an external evaluator, senior internal evaluator and project manager across the health, education, employment, arts, and community development sectors.
Eva is the founding chair of the Australian Evaluation Society’s first Multicultural Special Interest Group and an affiliate of the Center for Culturally Responsive Assessment and Evaluation.She is also the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Centre for Multicultural Program Evaluation (CMPE).
Eva Sarr
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Dr Kylie Brosnan
Kylie brings nearly three decades of experience in social and market research and program evaluation. Over her career she has designed and managed many complex data collection projects with expertise in longitudinal studies and vulnerable populations including children, migrants, veterans, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Before joining the Social Research Centre in 2021, Kylie was at Ipsos, where she was the ambassador for Australia and New Zealand in the Ipsos Global Science Organisation, working with a scientific community focused on data science, neuroscience and behavioural science.
In 2020 Kylie completed the micro credential for Behaviour Change at Monash University Behaviour Works. She has a passion and skill in using behavioural science to change behaviour in policy, programs and social marketing campaigns. Prior to Ipsos, she was Managing Director of Social Policy and Evaluation Research at Colmar Brunton and held management roles at both I-view and AC Nielsen.
Kylie has a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Queensland, a Diploma of Marketing Research from Charles Sturt University, and a Bachelor of Business from the University of Southern Queensland. Her thesis topic was data quality in online surveys including four essays on improving respondent participation and response effort.
Dr Kylie Brosnan
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Dr Lewe Atkinson
Dr Lewe Atkinson specialises in systems thinking approaches to strategic management and the implementation and practice of systems evaluation theory. Lewe is a director of the Australian-based Haines Centre for Strategic Management Ltd. The Haines Centre is a leading-edge, global team of strategic management consultants, facilitators and trainers who are renowned for their universal and practical application of systems thinking principles to business sustainability. The Haines Centre makes a meaningful, sustained difference to their clients and society because they work with organisations as multi-minded, multi-purpose social systems that are part of a larger purposeful system (society).
Dr Lewe Atkinson
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Subject matter and technical experts
Assoc. Prof Rebecca Wickes
Associate Professor Rebecca Wickes is a leading academic in the study of cohesion, resilience and migration. She is the Director for the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre and the Chair of Criminology at Monash University. Wickes’ research focuses on the community processes associated with social cohesion and inclusion. Dr Wickes is a lead investigator of the Australian Community Capacity Study, a multi-million, multi-site, longitudinal study of urban neighbourhoods. She is a quantitative analyst and has extensive experience working with state government, police, local councils, community stakeholders and community residents to better understand and resolve the concentration of social problems across a range of community contexts.
Assoc. Prof Rebecca Wickes
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Assoc. Prof Alan Gamlen
In addition to his academic leadership roles, he advises international organisations and governments on migration-related issues and provides commentary for global media outlets.
Assoc. Prof Alan Gamlen
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Professor Joe Lobianco
Joseph Lo Bianco is Professor of Language and Literacy Education in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, at the University of Melbourne, and a past president of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He specialises in language policy studies, bilingualism and intercultural education and research and action on peace and conflict in multi-ethnic settings. He was author of the 1987 National Policy on Languages, recognised worldwide as the first multilingual policy in an English speaking society. He has been an invited consultant on solving language problems in education and in wider society in 25 countries since 1990 and led major language education writing teams and research for major international organisations in Europe and Asia, such as LUCIDE, a 12 country municipal level study of multilingualism for the European Commission. Since 2012 he has directed a multi-country project on language policy and social cohesion in conflict affected settings in SE Asia for UNICEF and conducted large scale policy workshops for high level policy officials across Asia, under the auspices of UNESCO. He has an extensive list of publications with a strong recent focus on social cohesion, peace and conflict mitigation in multi-ethnic settings.
Professor Joe Lobianco
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Professor Greg Barton
Professor Greg Barton- Chair of Global Islamic Politics at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation.Greg is one of Australia’s leading scholars of both modern Indonesia and of terrorism and countering violent extremism. For more than 25 years he has undertaken extensive research on Indonesia politics and society, especially of the role of Islam as both a constructive and a disruptive force. He has been active in the inter-faith dialogue initiatives and has a deep commitment to building understanding of Islam and Muslim society. The central axis of his research interests is the way in which religious thought, individual believers and religious communities respond to modernity and to the modern nation state. He also has a strong interest in international relations and comparative international politics. Since 2004 he has made a comparative study of progressive Islamic, with particular reference to Nahdlatul Ulama and Muhammadiyah in Indonesia and the transnational Hizmet movement inspired by Turkey’s Fethullah Gulen.
Greg also has a general interest in security studies and human security and a particular interest in countering violent extremism. He continues to research the offshoots of Jemaah Islamiyah and related radical Islamist movements in Southeast Asia. Greg is a frequently interviewed by the Australian and international electronic and print media on Islam, Islamic and Islamist movements around the world and on Indonesia and the politics of the Muslim world. He is a regular expert guest on ABC TV’s News Breakfast and Sky News Australia and a variety of programs on ABC Radio National, ABC Local Radio, Radio Australia, SBS Radio and SBS TV, Voice of America (Washington), China Radio International (Bejing), BBC radio and television, Hongkong Radio, Radio New Zealand, China Central Television (CCTV), Channel News Asia (Singapore), and commercial radio and TV in Australia, including 3AW, 2GB, 2UE, Channel Seven News, Channel Nine’s Today, and Channel Ten’s The Project. He also writes opinion pieces for the Melbourne Herald Sun and the Australian Financial Review.
Professor Greg Barton
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Dr Sara Maher
Dr Sara Maher is a specialist in post-settlement issues for African migrant women of a refugee background. Her work has looked at the impact of pre-migration gendered oppression on the post-settlement experience of South Sudanese Australian women, the criminalisation of South Sudansese Australian youth and the ways this type of stigmatising changes how South Sudanese mothers parent in Australia and post-settlement support of mental health and well-being for women – including suicide prevention. Sara’s work is trauma-informed and grounded in frameworks of feminism, intersectionality and gendered, structural and systemic oppression.
Sara is a Churchill Fellow, author and oral historian and her work is grounded in a previous career in child protection, family violence and refugee settlement.
Dr Sara Maher
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Sue Cant
Sue Cant is a Social Accountability Adviser to World Vision International. Sue has more than 12 years experience working in international development on policy, technical advisory and evaluation in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. For the past 10 years she has specialised in social accountability approaches aimed at improving front-line health and education services. Sue provides technical advice to World Vision’s global social accountability approach, now used in 400 programs in 48 countries.Sue’s Master in Evaluation thesis focussed on the evidence for social accountability and evaluation approaches. Previously, Sue worked as an international journalist, She is a fellow of the US World Press Institute at Macalester College and has an undergraduate degree majoring in Middle East Politics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Melbourne, Australia.
Sue Cant
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Viv McWaters
Viv McWaters has worked in communications, community education, participatory evaluation, social history and strategy development. She now specialises in facilitation and designs workshops, conferences and training programs that encourage others to go think laterally and make discoveries and breakthroughs.To date, she has worked in over 40 different countries in south-east Asia and Africa, and her facilitations aim to connect people and ideas, break patterns and find new, more collaborative ways to relate.
Viv studied agricultural science at Longerenong Agricultural College, and has a Bachelor of Arts in Media Studies [RMIT University] and a Masters in Applied Science (Agriculture and Rural Development) from the University of Western Sydney. and is currently researching the role of applied improvisation in preparing people to respond in uncertainty, particularly disaster response.
Throughout her career, improvisation has been a constant source of fascination and inspiration for Viv. She has seen it spark imagination, encourage team building, promote active collaboration and enhance intellectual and emotional growth. Today, she is researching the potential of applied improvisation in preparing people to respond in uncertainty, particularly disaster response.
Viv McWaters
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Professor Felicity Allen
Associate Professor Felicity Allen is a quantitative research specialist with expertise in multivariate and univariate statistical techniques; statistical methods for social research; and data collection and evaluation methods for program evaluation. She wrote Health Psychology and Behaviour in Australia (2010). She was a senior academic at Monash University and is currently Director of RADAC PL. She has worked with a range of clients including government, semi-government departments, the Department of Justice, the Lake Tyers Aboriginal Community Renewal Project Evaluation, and the Mildura East Aboriginal Community Profile Partnership. As a registered psychologist, she brings a strong emphasis on understanding the drivers of behaviour and the influence of different communities on the actions of individuals and their sense of identity. Particularly at Lake Tyers, the intervention to up skill and empower the community was successful.
Professor Felicity Allen
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Ismaela Abubakar
Ismaela ABUBAKAR is an Information system Developer having worked with Medical Research Council Unit, the Gambia as a senior data manager for 17 years and now with Liverpool School of tropical medicine, Liverpool, UK. Ismaela is expert in the following software systems: REDCap, OpenClinical, MS Access and VBA, STATA, SPSS, ODK and High chart. Ismalea designs and develops database across multiple devices, performs data analysis, creates Dashboard and reports.
Ismaela Abubakar
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