2026 Conference Streams

Learning, Relational Evaluation and Public Service Reform: Hannah Hesselgreaves and Rob Wilson

Policymakers and public service managers are working in increasingly complex conditions, and now more than ever before need research which is robust, timely and relevant to pressing concerns. Approaches such as Learning Partnering, Appreciative Enquiry, Engaged scholarship and related action-oriented and relational approaches focus on making meaningful connections between research, teaching and learning, and knowledge exchange activities, seem increasingly well-placed to increase research relevance and narrow the academic-policy-practice gap in relational public services.

We invite researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working in this space to present at the conference (case study, workshop, paper presentation). Focus area can include but not limited to:

• Improving the relationship between practice, management and learning activities.
• Relational knowledge exchange/academic-policy-practice partnerships.
• Action-oriented/participatory/novel methods for reducing the research-practice gap, or the support of learning activities.
• The role of evaluators, intermediaries, policy engagement institutes and other institutes can play in moving public administration ideas into practice.

Prevention and Wellbeing for Relational Public Services: Max French and Rob Wilson

There have been repeated calls for the necessity of foregrounding issues prevention and wellbeing as the basis of strategic planning, commissioning/procurement and service delivery. Time and time again the scalability of this shift in approach has fallen foul of perceived challenges of governance, measurement and impact. In this theme we seek proposals which address the challenges of sustainable engagement to facilitate the prevailing assumptions around resources and social norms to (re)move the dial on prevention and wellbeing.

We invite researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working in this space to present at the conference (workshop or presentation). Focus areas can include but are not limited to:

· Examples of the relational approaches to the design and implementation of prevention and wellbeing of citizens, communities and neighbourhoods and the people who seek to work with them

· Action-oriented/participatory/novel methods for addressing challenges of the prevailing models and alternative scaling and sustainability activities

· Links between digital tools and platforms and engagement with communities for prevention and wellbeing.

Relational Policy and Policy Making: Rob Wilson & Koen Bartels

An increasing number of relational approaches to services are emerging which potentially respond to complexity and harness relationships including applied developments in capacity, investments, contracting and procurement. Others approach is to emphasise the plurality of means through which an outcomes-focus can operate. Relational Policy is an emerging agenda across the world and recent reports from OECD, Thinktanks, national and regional governments are seeking to adopt and/or promote relational approaches in public services which seek to embed ideas of social investment and social justice into the policy development and implementation cycle.

In this theme, we are interested in hosting a range of papers and workshops presentations from policymakers, practitioners, and academics interested invested in a forward-thinking approach to Relational Policy and Policy Making. Contributors can also propose their own thematic session or workshop linking a number of contributions.

Developing Relational Practice – Bring along your own problem or issue: Hannah Hesselgreaves & Chris Mowles

To take an interest in relational public services implies paying attention to the emergent possibilities of change with others by being curious and inquiring. This new theme is designed specifically for those who are prepared to present their ideas about relational public service differently, not as a finished and defended artefact, but by being open to exploring  the known and the yet unknown, the meanings which are still emerging, the problems, doubts and lacunae.