JONAS SCHOENEFELD – IWU DE

Biography: Dr. Jonas Schoenefeld is a Research Scientist and Project Manager at the Institute for Housing and Environment (IWU) in Darmstadt, Germany. Before joining the IWU in 2020, he was a research associate at the Institute of Political Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Dr. Schoenefeld received his doctorate from the School of Environmental Sciences/Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. He also holds a BA in psychology from Middlebury College (USA) and an MPhil in Geography and Environment from the University of Oxford (United Kingdom). Among his research foci are public policy monitoring and evaluation at different governance levels with a particular focus on climate, energy and environmental policy and governance. Dr. Schoenefeld has published widely on these topics in peer-reviewed Journals including NatureClimate Change, Evaluation, West European Politics, WIREs Climate Change, Climate Policy, GermanPolitical Science Quarterly, The International Spectator, Review of Policy Research and others. He has co-edited four special issues and in summer 2023, Cambridge University Press published his monograph on The Evaluation of Polycentric Climate Governance.

Lecture Title: The Role of Evaluation in Policy and Governance

Description: Evaluation, or the retrospective assessment of policy and governance, has become increasingly prominent in recent decades around the world. It has often been portrayed as a seemingly neutral and technical assessment exercise and signifier of good governance, but a growing number of scholars have also pointed to its political elements. Against this background, this lecture focuses (1) on theoretical and conceptual perspectives on the role of evaluation in policy and governance; (2) on approaches and methods to study evaluation as a policy and governance phenomenon; and (3) on the current state of our knowledge on the role of evaluation in policy and governance, including key insights and research gaps. In so doing, the lecture focuses mainly on environment and climate policy evaluation, a focus area of dynamic growth and attention in recent years, especially in the context of the European Union.