Editors

Prof. Dr. Stephan Grohs is Professor of Political and Administrative Science at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer and Head of the "Public Service" program area at the German Research Institute for Public Administration Speyer.

He has been editor in chief of the Zeitschrift für Evaluation since 2023 and was a long-standing spokesperson for the "Administration" working group at DeGeval (2006-2010 and 2015-2022). He is particularly interested in institutional evaluations and the evaluation of administrative reforms at national and subnational level. His research interests include local policy research and empirical administrative research. The focus here is on administrative organization and reforms at the state, regional and municipal level as well as the analysis of policy fields such as environmental, social, planning and integration policy. His research also focuses on the analysis of Europeanization processes and international administration. He has worked on and managed numerous externally funded projects, both for academic research funding (DFG) and transfer-oriented contract research.

Prof. Dr. Reinhard Stockmann (Chair of Sociology) is the founder and director of the Center for Evaluation (CEval) at Saarland University, head of the German-language Master's degree course in Evaluation and the English-language continuing education course "Master of Evaluation", which is offered jointly with the Distance and Independent Studies Center (DISC) at the TU Kaiserslautern. He is co-founder and former editor in chief of the Journal of Evaluation and a founding member of the DeGEval - Evaluation Society. He has conducted several hundred evaluations, has been involved with theories and methods of evaluation research for over 30 years and has published around 30 books and over 250 articles on the topics of evaluation, quality development, development policy and cooperation, vocational training, the environment, sociology, etc. Many of his textbooks and monographs have been translated into six languages. Recent publications include: "The Future of Evaluation. Trends, Herausforderungen, Perspektiven" and "Chinas Berufsbildung im Wandel" (both together with W. Meyer) as well as "Entwicklungspolitik. Theories - Problems - Strategies" (together with U. Menzel and F. Nuscheler). The first volume of the publication series entitled "Evaluation Globe", which examines the institutionalization of evaluation worldwide, has just been published.

Prof. Dr. Alexandra Caspari (Dipl. Sociologist) is Professor of Evaluation Research, Methods of Empirical Social Research and Statistics at the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences. For over 20 years, her work and research has focused on evaluation methods in theory and practice, with a particular focus on impact evaluation, meta-evaluation and evaluation synthesis.

She has relevant experience in conducting evaluations and has worked for various national and international organizations as an evaluator and scientific (methodological) consultant. In 2007, on behalf of the BMZ, she prepared the international methodological discussion on the topic of "Quality/Rigorous Impact Evaluation - Impact Measurement" for the German evaluation market. From 2009-2016, she was a scientific (methodological) advisor to the GIZ Evaluation Unit (or InWEnt) within the framework of third-party funded projects - in this context, she carried out various meta-evaluations and synthesis reports, among other things.

She is also committed to the professionalization of evaluations: She is a founding member of DeGEval - Evaluation Society and has been significantly involved in many DeGEval publications. From 2003 to 2007, she was a member of the DeGEval Board and later spokesperson for the 'Methods in Evaluation' working group for six years (2015-2021). In addition, she has developed and implemented various curricula for in-service training in evaluation - both for German and international requirements.

Prof. Dr. Gerd-Michael Hellstern, retired, was head of the Department of Administrative Economics and Management at the Institute of Business Administration at the University of Kassel.

Prof. Dr. Jan Hense was Professor of Higher Education Didactics and Evaluation at Justus Liebig University Giessen from 2014 to 2019 and has been working as an independent consultant for evaluation and impact orientation since 2020. His work focuses on research on evaluation, professionalization of evaluation as well as theory-based evaluation approaches and impact models in evaluation.

Since 2000, as part of his academic work at LMU Munich and JLU Giessen, he has been involved in a wide range of evaluation projects from local to European level, both in an executive and managerial capacity. In addition, he has advised various organizations in the public, non-profit and private sectors on the development of their evaluation capacities and impact-oriented management.

Jan Hense teaches on various evaluation topics, including at the University of Bern in the CAS/DAS/MAS in Evaluation continuing education programs and in the international Blended Learning Master Evaluation (MABLE) at the Universities of Saarbrücken and Kaiserslautern.

He is particularly interested in the further development of evaluation policy. He has been an active member of DeGEval - Evaluation Society since 2003 and was a member of the board from 2015 to 2021 and chairman of the board from 2017 to 2021. In addition, he was a member and head of the revision group for the new Standards for Evaluation published in 2017. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Evaluation since 2017.

Prof. Dr. Udo Kelle has taught methods of empirical social research and statistics at various universities in Germany and abroad (e.g. Bremen, Marburg, Vienna, Oslo). He has been a professor at the Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Armed Forces in Hamburg since 2010. His work interests and focal points lie in the field of methodological research and method development for basic, applied and evaluation research in the social sciences. He is particularly interested in the integration of qualitative and quantitative methods with the aim of improving the quality and validity of data, methods and research results. He has published extensively on this topic (including several comprehensive monographs, edited volumes and more than 100 articles).

Udo Kelle has been intensively involved in the field of evaluation for many years and has been involved in evaluation projects in the areas of nursing and care research, higher education research, teaching research, youth welfare, vocational training and church services.

He is particularly interested in the quality and significance of different types of data and the question of how causal statements and generalization claims can be empirically substantiated in evaluation research. He is a long-standing member of DeGEval - Evaluation Society and has been Chairman of the Board of this society since 2021.

Prof. (FH) PD Dr. Petra Wagner has been a professor of psychology on the "Social Work" course at the Faculty of Medical Engineering and Applied Social Sciences at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria since 2006. In 2009, she completed her habilitation in psychology at the University of Vienna, where she also gained her doctorate in 2003. She studied psychology at the University of Vienna from 1987 to 1993. After working as a school psychologist in Lower Austria for six years, she held the position of university assistant in the "Educational Psychology and Evaluation" department at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna from 2000 to 2006. In her current role as a UAS professor, she teaches and researches in the fields of social and educational psychology, school social work and evaluation research. Her research findings have been published in numerous international scientific journals and specialist books.

Contact: petra.wagner@fh-linz.at

Further information: pure.fh-ooe.at/en/persons/petra-wagner

PD Dr. Christoph E. Müller is an empirical social scientist and has been working in Berlin at Project Management Jülich, Forschungszentrum Jülich since 2020. He holds the staff position for monitoring and evaluation in the Start-up, Transfer and Innovation Promotion division. Previously, he worked as a researcher at the Center for Evaluation at Saarland University and at the Institute for Regulatory Impact Assessment and Evaluation at the German Research Institute for Public Administration. His work and research focuses on the design and implementation of impact-oriented monitoring systems, research into evaluation methods, research on evaluation and the evaluation and research of funding measures in various policy fields.

Over the past 15 years, Mr. Müller has been involved in numerous evaluation projects in managerial and operational roles in the fields of environmental, education, innovation, research and health policy as well as in development cooperation and public administration. During this period, he published a large number of research papers, including more than 30 articles in peer-reviewed journals. Since 2018, Mr. Müller has been teaching as a private lecturer at the Faculty of Empirical Human Sciences and Economics at Saarland University, mainly in the Master's program in Evaluation.