Dr Rhyall Gordon
Program Planning and Evaluation Coordinator
Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Ed
- Email:rhyall.gordon@newcastle.edu.au
- Phone:0249217934
Programs guided by those most affected
Dr Rhyall Gordon is the Program Planning and Evaluation Coordinator at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle. His work strengthens the exchange between theory and practice in the design and learning of equity projects within the University and across community partnerships.
A central part of his role involves leading program inquiry and evaluation initiatives that support practitioners to engage critically with questions of purpose, rationale, and logic, and to situate their work within broader social justice commitments.
Rhyall’s evaluation practice draws on culturally responsive, developmental, and capacity-building frameworks. He has extensive experience in community development and community-based research, with expertise across areas such as homelessness and affordable housing, gender-based violence, and work with migrant and refugee communities. His PhD focused on non-capitalist community economies in the north of Spain, exploring how economic collectives in the Asturias region, and their community economy practitioners, are developing economic practices to pursue more equitable and sustainable worlds.
A common thread across his work is a commitment to challenging knowledge hierarchies and foregrounding marginalised voices in the processes of developing, understanding, and evidencing program impact. His scholarship and practice are guided by an interest in how evaluation can contribute to equity-focused learning and systemic change—connecting the ethical and political dimensions of evaluation with its practical role in transforming the conditions that shape people’s lives. You can read more about this in Rhyall’s paper (with colleagues) entitled “Evaluation for equity: reclaiming evaluation by striving towards counter-hegemonic democratic practices.” (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00220620.2021.1931059)
Rhyall has co-led workshops on evaluation methodologies through the Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) Community of Practice and at other universities, contributing to sector-wide learning on critical and participatory approaches to evaluation. He is currently a co-editor of a Special Issue on Evaluation for Equity and Social Justice for the journal ACCESS.
Rhyall is also leading the evaluative aspects of the Reclaiming My Place Healing and Recovery project, supported by funding from the Primary Health Network, which seeks to strengthen trauma-informed and culturally grounded practices that promote healing and wellbeing.
In 2026, Rhyall will lead an externally funded project to develop practitioner resources for program design and evaluation. The project proposes the development of a practitioner toolkit to support context-responsive, justice-oriented program design and evaluation in the higher education equity sector. Centred on how leverage the use of program logic models, it draws on Carol Bacchi’s What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach to critically examine how equity “problems” are framed. By integrating WPR with the Student Equity in Higher Education Evaluation Framework (SEHEEF), the toolkit aims to strengthen practitioners’ capacity to design initiatives that are both evaluable and socially transformative. It is hoped the project will contribute to sector-wide learning and more equitable approaches to program logic and evaluation practice.
Programs guided by those most affected
Dr Rhyall Gordon is the Program Planning and Evaluation Coordinator at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education at the University of Newcastle.
Career Summary
Biography
- International and Cross-Cultural Development Work Rhyall’s professional journey began in international and community development, working across diverse social, cultural, and political contexts in El Salvador, Russia, Canada, and more recently in Australia. These experiences provided him with an invaluable foundation for understanding how community-based initiatives emerge within different cultural settings and under varied structural conditions. Working alongside local practitioners, grassroots organisations, and community members in these different contexts has shaped his appreciation for the multiplicity of ways people envision and enact change in their own lives. These experiences fostered not only a deep respect for local knowledge and cultural practices but also an ability to navigate complexity, listen across difference, and adapt approaches to context. The diversity of these experiences has informed Rhyall’s approach to collaboration, participation, and social justice in program design and evaluation, reinforcing his commitment that meaningful change must be both locally grounded and accountable.
- Local Government and Community Capacity Building Building on his international experience, Rhyall spent more than a decade working in community development and community planning within local government in Australia. During this period, he focused on strengthening the capacity of communities and organisations to engage in their own development processes. His work included designing and implementing strategic plans, facilitating partnerships between councils and community groups, and supporting participatory planning processes that encouraged communities to articulate their priorities and shape local action. Through this work, Rhyall developed a deep understanding of the institutional and relational dimensions of local governance—how policy frameworks, funding structures, and professional cultures can both enable and constrain community-led initiatives. This experience also deepened his interest in how public institutions can build relationships of trust, reciprocity, and mutual accountability with the communities they serve. It provided him with a strong practical grounding in participatory approaches to capacity building and social inclusion, which continue to inform his work in equity and evaluation today.
- Academic Research and Theoretical Foundations Rhyall completed his PhD in Human Geography at the University of Newcastle, where he explored non-capitalist community economies in the Asturias region of northern Spain. His doctoral research examined how economic collectives and their practitioners were developing alternative, cooperative, and sustainable practices that sought to create more equitable and socially just forms of livelihood. This PhD work provided him with a strong theoretical foundation for understanding community development, not merely as a set of practices or policies, but as a form of social and economic experimentation—one that challenges dominant assumptions about value, organisation, and wellbeing. The intellectual and ethical commitments underpinning his research—particularly around the politics of knowledge, power, and collective agency—continue to shape his professional practice. His academic grounding in critical social theory, community economies, and participatory research methods enables him to bridge scholarship and practice, bringing conceptual depth and reflexivity to his work in evaluation, program design, and community engagement.
- Program Planning and Evaluation at CEEHE In his current role as Program Planning and Evaluation Coordinator at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education (CEEHE), Rhyall works at the intersection of research, practice, and policy. He leads and supports initiatives that embed evaluation as an integral part of program planning and design, rather than as an afterthought or compliance activity. Central to his approach is the conviction that evaluation should amplify the voices of those most affected by programs—particularly those often marginalised within higher education and community systems—and that their insights are essential to designing inclusive and transformative initiatives. Rhyall collaborates closely with colleagues and practitioners to create spaces for critical reflection, shared learning, and collective sense-making about what programs are trying to achieve and how they contribute to equity and social justice. Through this work, he is helping to reimagine evaluation as a participatory and ethical practice—one that not only measures impact but also deepens understanding, builds capacity, and supports ongoing transformation in both institutional and community contexts.
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of Newcastle
- Bachelor of Arts (Honours), Queens University of Belfast - Ireland
- Master of Science (Development Management), Open University UK
Keywords
- Community
- Equity
- Evaluation
- Higher Education
Languages
- Spanish (Fluent)
Fields of Research
| Code | Description | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 390303 | Higher education | 20 |
| 441001 | Applied sociology, program evaluation and social impact assessment | 40 |
| 440903 | Social program evaluation | 40 |
Publications
For publications that are currently unpublished or in-press, details are shown in italics.
Chapter (2 outputs)
| Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 |
Gordon RB, Lumb M, Bunn M, Burke PJ, 'Evaluation for equity: reclaiming evaluation by striving towards counter-hegemonic democratic practices', 37-50 (2023)
|
|||||||
| 2018 |
Gordon R, 'Food sovereignty and community economies: Researching a Spanish case study', 210-222 (2018) [B1]
|
Open Research Newcastle | ||||||
Conference (1 outputs)
| Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | Gordon RB, 'Food sovereignty: opportunities for negotiating surplus', Institute of Australian Geographers Conference Abstracts, Wollongong (2011) [E3] |
Journal article (5 outputs)
| Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 |
Gordon RB, Lumb M, Bunn M, Burke PJ, 'Evaluation for equity: reclaiming evaluation by striving towards counter-hegemonic democratic practices', JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION AND HISTORY, 54, 277-290 (2022) [C1]
Formal evaluation of policies, programmes and people has become ubiquitous in contemporary western contexts. This is the case for equity and widening participation (WP)... [more] Formal evaluation of policies, programmes and people has become ubiquitous in contemporary western contexts. This is the case for equity and widening participation (WP) agendas in higher education, for which evaluation is often required to measure 'what works'. Although evaluation has a 'fundamentally social, political, and value-oriented character' (Guba and Lincoln. 1989. Fourth Generation Evaluation. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 7), an experimental approach, situated within hegemonic positivist epistemologies, has tended to prevail. In this paper, we argue that it is misguided to pursue evaluation with an apolitical pretext of independence and objectivity. Drawing on Butler's concept of performativity, we explore how hegemonic anti-democratic evaluation practices can potentially re-inscribe and reproduce the very inequalities that WP seeks to address. By critiquing the technologies of evaluation, we lay out one way of understanding how democratic evaluation practices can reclaim evaluation to make possible more diverse and socially just worlds.
|
Open Research Newcastle | |||||||||
| 2020 |
Gordon R, 'Productive Paradoxes: Exploring Prefigurative Practices with Derrida through a Spanish Food Sovereignty Collective', Antipode, 52 783-799 (2020) [C1]
There has been a proliferation in the use of the concept of prefiguration to describe and understand many of the protest and social change movements of the past decade.... [more] There has been a proliferation in the use of the concept of prefiguration to describe and understand many of the protest and social change movements of the past decade. However, there are key aspects of the concept that remain unexplored. In this paper I consider telos and justice, and unveil a temporal paradox arising from the thinking behind prefiguration. Rather than this temporal paradox of prefiguration being the undoing of the concept, it does in fact have the potential to be its strength. The purpose of this paper is to assert, by drawing on Derrida's notion of the impossibility of justice, that the temporal paradox of prefiguration is not something to be resolved but instead is to be foregrounded and navigated. I use research from a food sovereignty collective in the north of Spain to offer an illustration of a prefigurative economic politics that embraces Derrida's justice-as-an-impossibility.
|
Open Research Newcastle | |||||||||
| 2019 |
Gordon R, 'Embracing Aporia: Food sovereignty and how to navigate ethics', POLICY FUTURES IN EDUCATION, 17 892-904 (2019) [C1]
|
Open Research Newcastle | |||||||||
| 2016 |
Gordon R, 'Radical Openings: Hegemony and the Everyday Politics of Community Economies', RETHINKING MARXISM-A JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS CULTURE & SOCIETY, 28, 73-90 (2016) [C1]
|
Open Research Newcastle | |||||||||
| 2012 |
Phelan L, McGee J, Gordon R, 'Cooperative governance: one pathway to a stable-state economy', Environmental Politics, 21, 412-431 (2012) [C1]
|
Open Research Newcastle | |||||||||
| Show 2 more journal articles | |||||||||||
Report (1 outputs)
| Year | Citation | Altmetrics | Link | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 |
Bourke S, Burke PJ, Darney S, Gordon R, Lumb M, Smith S, 'Children’s University Newcastle Evaluation Report' (2021)
|
Open Research Newcastle |
Grants and Funding
Summary
| Number of grants | 4 |
|---|---|
| Total funding | $300,872 |
Click on a grant title below to expand the full details for that specific grant.
20252 grants / $124,866
Reclaiming My Place Healing and Recovery Project$100,000
Funding body: Hunter New England and Central Coast Primary Health Network (HNECC)
| Funding body | Hunter New England and Central Coast Primary Health Network (HNECC) |
|---|---|
| Project Team | Prof Penny Jane Burke, Prof Penny Jane Burke, Mrs Felicity Cocuzzoli, Dr Rhyall Gordon, Dr Matt Lumb |
| Scheme | Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Healing and Recovery Grant |
| Role | Investigator |
| Funding Start | 2025 |
| Funding Finish | 2026 |
| GNo | G2500070 |
| Type Of Funding | C3200 – Aust Not-for Profit |
| Category | 3200 |
| UON | Y |
From Problem to Impact: A Toolkit for Contextual and Evaluable Equity Program Design$24,866
Funding body: Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES)
| Funding body | Australian Centre for Student Equity and Success (ACSES) |
|---|---|
| Project Team | Dr Rhyall Gordon, Prof Penny Jane Burke, Dr Matt Lumb |
| Scheme | Practitioner Resource Grants |
| Role | Lead |
| Funding Start | 2025 |
| Funding Finish | 2025 |
| GNo | G2501008 |
| Type Of Funding | C1500 - Aust Competitive - Commonwealth Other |
| Category | 1500 |
| UON | Y |
20221 grants / $74,686
Reclaiming My Place: the nexus between research and practice$74,686
Funding body: Anonymous
| Funding body | Anonymous |
|---|---|
| Project Team | Prof Penny Jane Burke, Mrs Felicity Cocuzzoli, Dr Rhyall Gordon, Dr Matt Lumb |
| Scheme | Research and Scholarship Support |
| Role | Investigator |
| Funding Start | 2022 |
| Funding Finish | 2025 |
| GNo | G2200754 |
| Type Of Funding | C3300 – Aust Philanthropy |
| Category | 3300 |
| UON | Y |
20171 grants / $101,320
Evaluation for Equity$101,320
Funding body: Anonymous
| Funding body | Anonymous |
|---|---|
| Project Team | Prof Penny Jane Burke, Dr Matt Lumb, Dr Rhyall Gordon, Mrs Selina Darney, Mr David Pearson |
| Scheme | Research and Scholarship Support |
| Role | Investigator |
| Funding Start | 2017 |
| Funding Finish | 2020 |
| GNo | G1701461 |
| Type Of Funding | C3300 – Aust Philanthropy |
| Category | 3300 |
| UON | Y |
Dr Rhyall Gordon
Position
Program Planning and Evaluation Coordinator
Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Ed
Engagement and Equity Division
Contact Details
| rhyall.gordon@newcastle.edu.au | |
| Phone | 0249217934 |
Connect with me
