a) Evaluating Restorative Justice with Integrity: Voices, Evidence, and What We Choose to Value
Many of us working in restorative justice feel conflicted about evaluation. We know it matters for learning, accountability, and influence, yet we also see how easily it can narrow what counts, privilege certain voices, or distract practice from its values. This course starts from that tension. It treats evaluation not as a neutral technical task, but as a set of choices that shape how restorative justice is understood, resourced, and legitimised.
The course invites participants to explore evaluation as a relational and ethical practice in its own right. Rather than offering a single model or toolkit, it introduces an ecology-of-evidence approach that brings together stories, patterns, indicators, outcomes, and context. Participants will be supported to make deliberate, principled decisions about what kinds of evidence are useful for different purposes and audiences, and how restorative impact can be made visible in ways that are credible, honest, and aligned with restorative justice as a movement for social and systemic change.
This workshop is facilitated by Dr Terence Bevington (The Restorative Lab).
b) Participatory and Relational Approaches to Research
Planning, conducting and disseminating research are too often lonely, frustrating, high-pressure endeavours. Many of us work in contexts and institutions that privilege certain forms and sources of knowledge, research methods and outputs, and that discourage sharing, building relationships and collaboration. This presents challenges to people who want to take a restorative approach to their research, and who are motivated by the potential to contribute to social change.
This workshop will focus on relational and participatory approaches to research. Participants will be enabled to reflect collectively on such questions as:
- How can participatory action research methods help researchers empower people in the research design, data collection and data analysis processes?
- How can experienced researchers help junior colleagues and students develop relational and participatory approaches to research? What do researchers need from each other to be facilitated to work in these ways?
- How can researchers build partnerships with policymakers, practitioners and activists in order to understand social contexts, disseminate social scientific evidence, and translate research findings into practical change?
Led by Dr Anna Gregory (The Restorative Lab) and Dr Ian Marder (Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology), the workshop combines circle processes with play, group work and inputs on research evidence to facilitate participants to discuss and learn about these topics and reflect on how they can use these ideas to inform their work.
The workshop is primarily oriented towards meeting the needs of those who have been, or will be, involved in designing, conducting, supervising, engaging with and/or using research in the course of their work, including persons based in policy, practice, university and community settings. It is also open to any person with an interest in these topics.