María Bustelo – författare

Far more than a contractual step, commissioning shapes what is evaluated, whose voices matter, and how evidence informs democratic governance. The Power of Commissioning: Enabling Democratic Evaluation brings long overdue attention to this influential yet often overlooked dimension of evaluation practice.Positioning commissioners as civic and political actors, the book shows how their choices, from problem framing and terms of reference to team selection, management, and use, can either reinforce technocratic routines or actively promote inclusion, transparency, equity, and meaningful public learning. Drawing on comparative empirical cases, it offers one of the first integrated frameworks for democratic commissioning, complete with practical principles, rubrics, and clear “dos and don’ts” that commissioners can apply directly in real systems. The volume also advances a pioneering competency model for commissioners and documents innovative capacity‑building initiatives that treat them as knowledge brokers and democratic agents, an area largely absent from existing evaluation guidance.Featuring contributions from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, The Power of Commissioning provides both conceptual depth and actionable tools. It is an essential resource for researchers, policymakers, evaluators, and commissioning professionals committed to strengthening democratic practice through evaluation.

The Politics of Feminist Knowledge Transfer draws together analytical work on gender training and gender expertise. Its chapters critically reflect on the politics of feminist knowledge transfer, understood as an inherently political, dynamic and contested process, the overall aim of which is to transform gendered power relations in pursuit of more equal societies, workplaces, and policies. At its core, the work explores the relationship between gender expertise, gender training, and broader processes of feminist transformation arising from knowledge transfer activities. Examining these in a reflective way, the book brings a primarily practice-based debate into the academic arena. With contributions from authors of diverse backgrounds, including academics, practitioners and representatives of gender training institutions, the editors combine a focus on gender expertise and gender training, with more theory-focused chapters.

Gender Equality Behind Bars represents the first analysis of prison and immigration detention policies, broadly identified as penality policies, within the context of gender policy studies. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it provides a roadmap for better understanding penality policy from feminist and gendered perspectives. An introductory chapter examines the paradoxical relationship between gender equality and life behind bars for women. This is followed by ten in-depth case-studies on gender and penality policies in a unique line-up of countries in the Global North (Denmark, Poland, Portugal, Canada, the UK and Spain) and the Global South (Zimbabwe, Uruguay and Peru). The comparative conclusion identifies cross-national and cross-sectoral trends and proposes a research agenda for a gendered approach to penality policies. Issues including discrimination against women prisoners and women migrant detainees, gender-bias in prison environments and potential for gender transformation “behind bars” are covered throughout the book. Combining theoretical and empirical evidence, Gender Equality Behind Bars will appeal to scholars and students of public policy, gender studies, anthropology and criminology, as well as those interested in penal policies, criminal justice and punishment.