(b. 1951, Spokane, Washington). Ph.D., M.S. Educational Psychology, University of Kentucky; B.A. Psychology, Thomas More College.

Mertens is Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations and Research at Gallaudet University. Her theoretical contribution to evaluation has centered on bringing the implications of the transformative paradigm to the evaluation community. The transformative paradigm places central importance on the lives and experiences of those who suffer oppression and discrimination, whatever the basis of that may be—sex, race or ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status. Evaluators working within this paradigm are consciously aware of power differentials in the evaluation context, and they search for ways to ameliorate the effects of oppression and discrimination by linking their research activities to social action and wider questions of social inequity and ...