Positionality as Praxis: Embodiment,Imagination,and Liberation in Evaluation

This second issue in our four-part series on positionality in evaluation continues an intentional exploration of how evaluators locate themselves in relation to power, identity, community, and knowledge-making (Boyce et al., 2025). Building on the dialogic and relational foundations laid in the first issue (Phillips II et al., 2025), the articles in this issue move toward positionality as embodied practice—how evaluators’ bodies, identities, and presence shape relationships and meaning-making in context; theoretical intervention—the use of positionality to disrupt dominant epistemologies and reframe what counts as knowledge in evaluation; and liberatory praxis—the alignment of reflection and action toward justice-oriented evaluation within unequal systems.

Central to this issue is an understanding long articulated by evaluators from historically and systematically marginalized populations, that identity is not separable from evaluation work, but rather shapes evaluators’ roles, ethical commitments, and day-to-day practice (Hartman et al., 2022). An identity central to this issue is Blackness. Research on Black evaluators’ experiences has demonstrated that identity, role, and practice are deeply intertwined, with social justice functioning as an organizing orientation rather than an optional stance (Boyce et al., 2023). Black evaluators consistently describe themselves as advocates, culturally and contextually competent practitioners, mentors, and credibility bearers; not because these roles are assigned, but because they are necessitated by working within systems shaped by racialized inequities and historical erasure (Avent et al., 2024).

Collectively, the authors of this issue's positionality statements challenge narrow, procedural uses of positionality statements and instead insist that who evaluators are, how they are read, how they move through space, and how they are historically situated fundamentally shape evaluation design, relationships, and use (Becho, 2021; Dean-Coffey, 2021). Evaluators continue to navigate increasingly hostile professional and political environments in which explicit commitments to equity, racial justice, liberation, and research/evaluation are surveilled, constrained, or erased (Smith, 2025).

The three articles in this issue each take up positionality from distinct yet complementary vantage points, illustrating the depth and breadth of what positionality work can offer the field. Authors offer scholarship that is courageous, reflective, and grounded in lived experience. Their work reminds us that positionality is not an add-on to evaluation practice but a methodological, ethical, and relational stance and one that requires sustained reflexivity and accountability. Authors reaffirm positionality as not just a disclosure exercise, but a sustained negotiation of identity, responsibility, and practice within unequal systems.

In “I Know You See It”: Exploring the Impact of Physical Positionality as Black Evaluators, Anthont Sullers, Cecilia Vaughn-Guy, and Cherie Avent center physical embodiment as a critical and often underexamined dimension of evaluator positionality. Drawing on case examples from Black-centered educational evaluations, the authors examine how physical traits such as stature, skin tone, gender presentation, age, and pregnancy shape relationships, power dynamics, and trust with program participants and stakeholders. Grounded in culturally responsive evaluation, the article demonstrates how physical positionality can function simultaneously as a resource and a constraint, influencing access, credibility, and interpretation. The authors argue that attending to physical positionality deepens evaluators’ capacity to engage ethically and responsively, particularly in contexts shaped by racialized histories and inequities.

In Advancement on the Edge of Dreaming: Positionality as a Tool for Justice, Lisa Sargent and Geri Peak offer a poetic, dialogic, and visionary co-constructed exploration of positionality as intentional methodology. Writing across generational, spiritual, and artistic lineages, the authors position dreaming, imagination, and embodiment as essential to evaluation practice oriented toward justice and liberation. Rather than treating positionality as disclosure, they enact it as praxis—interweaving storytelling, metaphor, and reflection to challenge colonial and technocratic assumptions about rigor, use, and value. This article invites evaluators to reclaim imagination as a legitimate and necessary evaluative resource and to approach theories of change, learning, and accountability as sites of collective dreaming and possibility-making.

Finally, HEAPS of Knowledge: Black Women's Positionality as Theory, Praxis, and Liberation, by Sharon Attipoe-Dorco, monique liston, and Kimberly Harris, advances a powerful theoretical intervention by naming Black women's positionality as an intellectual and methodological framework in its own right. The authors introduce HEAPS (Highly Educated and Politicized Sisters), as a way of understanding how Black women evaluators navigate hypervisibility, marginalization, expertise, and resistance within evaluation and adjacent systems. Drawing on Black feminist thought, Afrofuturism, and Pan-African traditions, they argue that identity is not merely context for evaluation work but data, theory, and praxis; shaping what questions are asked, how knowledge is produced, and how evaluators act in relation to power and community. Through layered reflections, the authors assert Black women's lived experience as a site of knowledge production and call on the field to move beyond extractive or reductive approaches to positionality that treat identity as a static disclosure or contextual add-on.

Taken together, these three articles push evaluation scholarship to reckon with embodied practice, theoretical intervention, and liberatory praxis as central to evaluative practice. They ask evaluators not only to name who they are, but also to consider how their presence shapes what is possible in evaluation (Phillips et al., 2022). As part of AJE's print and online collections of evaluator positionality statements, the authors in this issue call the field to understand positionality as a dynamic, relational, and deeply consequential dimension of evaluation—one that extends beyond identity to include the contexts of practice, implementation, and advocacy in which evaluators are embedded. These contributions hold that positionality carries both risk and transformative potential, shaping not only how evaluators are perceived, but how they design, conduct, and stand accountable in their work. We, as Section Co-Editors, assert that values, lived experience, and sustained accountability to marginalized communities remain central to ethical evaluation practice.