Supporting people and organizations in assessing what’s effective, what needs improvement and how to turn that knowledge into better decisions is a defining focus of Professor Isabelle Bourgeois’ work.
Bourgeois is the first holder of the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue Professorship on Public Policy, and a role that marks the next chapter in a career dedicated to the theory and practice of evaluation. The professorship is an initiative by the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue and the Office of Public Policy Research and Outreach.
It’s a new professional appointment for Bourgeois, but in many ways, it’s a return to her public service roots.
She began her career as a professional evaluator with the Canadian federal government, where she worked for more than 10 years before moving to academia. She joined the École nationale d’administration publique at the Université du Québec, where she held a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Policy and Program Evaluation. She then came to uOttawa in 2019.
“My time in the federal government had a significant influence on my work as a researcher,” says Bourgeois.
“As an evaluator, I was able to observe first-hand how evaluations were used in organizations, and I saw that we needed to strengthen the capacity of organizations to use evaluation to support learning, rather than just for accountability.”
Building capacity, from the grassroots to the government
Evaluation capacity building seeks to embed suitable mindsets for evaluation into organizations. It supports people and organizations in strengthening the skills, systems and structures needed to do evaluations well and to integrate the results into decision-making.
For more than 20 years, Bourgeois’ research has focused on understanding how different types of evaluation capacity-building efforts can lead to evidence-informed decision-making and improved organizations. She has had the opportunity to work with multiple Canadian federal departments and agencies, public health units across Ontario and, more recently, small community organizations through LaboÉval. This last project received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council and the Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services.
“These small organizations were interested in working with us because they felt that evaluation would help them improve their services and programming, but they didn’t know enough to take it on by themselves,” Bourgeois says.
To date, 16 non-profits focused on areas such as food security, shelter, mental health, newcomer services and LGBTQ advocacy have benefited from LaboÉval’s evaluation training, support and resources.
“Starting from scratch with these organizations and building up their understanding, knowledge and the ability to do some of that work themselves, and then seeing how they’re applying the results, has been very fulfilling,” Bourgeois says.
“It’s through the lab that I’ve been able to immediately see the impacts of my work.”
Whether she’s empowering community organizations to create meaningful impacts or supporting federal policy analysts in bringing research and evaluation into their work, Bourgeois is most proud of how her evolving body of work is continuously moving the science and practical application of evaluation forward.
The Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue Professorship on Public Policy creates new opportunities for Bourgeois to apply her expertise in helping evaluation leaders and federal policymakers to access and use evidence.
Turning theory into practice
When Bourgeois explains her role as a professor of evaluation within a faculty of education, she connects the main strands of her research by highlighting how they’re relevant to theories on adult learning. She then applies these insights to her work with the federal public service in two related areas: individual and organizational learning.
“We’re talking about how individuals in the workplace develop new competencies and skills to make evidence-informed decisions, to generate evidence and to use evidence produced by someone else to improve programs and to design policies,” she says.
“Then, there’s also the organizational learning aspect, which is putting in place the systems, structures and supports needed for people to make evidence-informed decisions. Strengthening individual competencies is essential, of course, but developing organizational supports is what enables evidence-informed decision-making and evaluation capacity to become sustainable over time.”
“The professorship has given me a new opportunity to expand the work that I was doing both in terms of organizational reach and in terms of conceptual development.”
Isabelle Bourgeois, PhD
— Holder of the inaugural Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue Professorship in Public Policy
Connecting policy analysis communities
Throughout her career, Bourgeois has cultivated working relationships with evaluation leaders across numerous federal departments. Strengthening these ties through formal collaborations is among the top priorities for her professorship term.
“My goal with this research is to build bridges between the evaluation and the policy shops who find themselves in different directorates within organizations and don’t always have opportunities to connect with one another,” she says.
As professorship holder, Bourgeois has an active agenda for 2026, including many engagements with evaluation experts and practitioners at the local, national and international levels.
In February, Bourgeois was joined by uOttawa Professor Eric Champagne, Director of the Centre on Governance, and other evaluation experts for the panel discussion Making Results Matter: Connecting Evaluation, Research, and Policy in the Federal Landscape, held during the Annual Learning Event of the Canadian Evaluation Society, National Capital Chapter.
In March, Bourgeois will host a launch event for the professorship, How Intergovernmental Relations Shape Evidence Use in Public Policy. It will feature a guest lecture by Kathy L. Brock, professor in the School of Policy Studies and the Department of Political Studies at Queen’s University.
Bourgeois will also cross the Atlantic twice this year. First, she’ll deliver a keynote address on evidence-informed policymaking at the United Kingdom Evaluation Society’s annual conference. Then this fall, she’ll be a visiting researcher at the Sciences Po Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Public Policies in Paris as part of the International Scholars in Policy Evaluation Programme. Her stay will enable collaborations with the lab’s researchers in the Evaluation of Democracy research group.
“The professorship has given me a new opportunity to expand the work that I was doing both in terms of organizational reach and in terms of conceptual development. In our current socio-political context, we need public officials who can access and understand different types of evidence, including research and evaluation, to make decisions and develop policy," says Bourgeois.
"These competencies help them navigate disinformation and political pressures, to focus on what is best for Canadians. The work that I am doing as part of the professorship will hopefully contribute to strengthening these competencies and lead to more evidence-informed policies and programs across different levels of government.”
About Isabelle Bourgeois
Isabelle Bourgeois, PhD is a full professor in the Faculty of Education and holder of the Alex Trebek Forum for Dialogue Professorship in Public Policy at the University of Ottawa. Her ongoing research work focuses on measuring and building organizational evaluation capacity (EC) in the public and community sectors. Her award-winning research has been recognized by the Canadian Evaluation Society, the Canadian Public Administration journal, and the University of Ottawa’s Office of the Vice-President, Research and Innovation, among others.
