Book launch: Realist Evaluation: Principles and Practice
- Date: Wednesday 7 May 2025, 12:30 – 13:45
- Location: Social Sciences Building, seminar rooms 12.21 and 12.25
- Type: Seminars and lectures
- Cost: Free
Dr Ana Manzano and Dr Emma Williams launch their new book 'Realist Evaluation: Principles and Practice' as part of the SSP School Seminar Series.
Realist Evaluation: Principles and Practice offers a comprehensive exploration of contemporary realist evaluation, showcasing how skilled practitioners navigate diverse fieldwork contexts.
Authored by experts spanning academia and evaluation backgrounds across five continents in fields including climate change, criminology, health, and international development, the book provides a rich tapestry of perspectives. Covering participatory approaches, digital and visual data collection, interpreter-mediated interviews, and innovative methods like refuse data analysis, the authors delve into contemporary social research methodologies while addressing issues such as power, insider/outsider research, the nature of evidence, critical and scientific realism philosophies of science, and confirmation bias in qualitative research. Practical advice is provided in areas such as developing a topic guide, combining a realist review with an evaluation, and managing large, multi-site cross-national projects. This collection underscores the creative nature of the realist imagination, highlighting ongoing innovations by scholars and evaluators.
Critics’ reviews:
Many years ago, Charles Wright Mills implored us to remember that doing social research was not a matter of blindly following set designs and routinised procedures. It requires a generous application of the sociological imagination. In Manzano and Williams’s collection we discover the same creative motif. In example after example, we gain insight on the resourcefulness of the realist imagination.
Dr Ana Manzano is an Associate Professor in Public Policy in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds.
Dr Emma Williams was an Associate Professor in the Realist Research, Evaluation and Learning Initiative at Charles Darwin University, Australia until mid 2024 and now leads Maburra Consulting.
This event is in-person and open to all staff and postgraduate researchers. The seminar will take place in 12.21/25 in the Social Sciences building at 12:30-13:45 and attendees do not need to register in advance.