Exploring Positionality and Intersectionality in Practice: Culturally Responsive Evaluation Among Emerging Evaluators at EvaLab

Abstract

This paper explores how emerging evaluators at EvaLab, an interdisciplinary evaluation hub at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, engage with positionality and intersectionality in culturally responsive evaluation (CRE). Drawing from our diverse identities as international and diasporic scholars, we examine three analytic dimensions of positionality in practice. Through reflexive narratives and collective analysis, we argue that positionality is a dynamic, co-constructed practice constituted by migration, belonging, and collective learning. Our collaborative reflections illustrate how CRE becomes a space of dialogue, care, and social justice when rooted in cultural humility and relational accountability. This paper contributes to evaluation scholarship by centering emerging and international evaluators’ voices, demonstrating how intersectional liminality enriches CRE practice, and proposing positionality as collective praxis: an ongoing commitment to equity, reciprocity, and shared meaning-making within culturally diverse teams.

Keywords

cultural responsiveness new evaluators evaluation practice self-evaluation

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