In early June 2025, the 6^th European Technology Assessment Conference, ETAC6, brought together around 170 technology assessment (TA) practitioners from over 30 countries and five continents to discuss global TA. Spread over three days and three parallel streams, the conference comprised keynote lectures, interactive panels and workshops, paper presentations, and a poster session, hosted by the Austrian Institute of Technology Assessment (ITA) in the main building of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and online. An international scientific advisory board (from Australia, Germany, USA, Chile, India, Ethiopia, and the OECD) and the global TA network supported the organisation of the conference throughout all phases.

To broaden the transnational perspectives of TA, the conference’s call for papers had set out three sub-themes:

When planning the conference, we could fortunately draw on insights from a comparative European TA project (Klüver et al. 2016), on learnings from previous European TA conferences, and on expertise from the globalTA network (Hahn and Ladikas 2019; Hennen et al. 2023). All these engagements successfully mobilize, compile, compare, and discuss different national TA landscapes, institutions and approaches.

Against this backdrop, the central question regarding this inaugural global TA conference arises naturally: What is new, and what, while not entirely novel to scholars of global TA, is worth further exploring and developing?

In the opening plenary, it was emphasized that a single, fixed model does not define TA; rather, it takes multiple forms that evolve across diverse political and institutional contexts. The speakers acknowledged that both formal TA structures and TA-like practices were essential for addressing complex challenges, particularly where legal or regulatory mechanisms fall short. They argued that, although TA is essentially a democratic practice, it can also play meaningful roles in informing other governance regimes. A central concern was how to uphold core principles – such as non-partisanship – particularly in volatile or polarized political environments. The discussion highlighted the need for capacity building, reciprocal support, and identifying practical zones for collaboration, while calling for ongoing reflection on how TA can remain grounded in democratic values amid global uncertainties.

The plenary keynote on the second day, delivered by Roberts Molina (Chile), introduced “Southern Perspectives on Global Concerns”. It was followed by commentaries by Grunwald (Germany), Kebede (African Union), and Ashworth (Australia). The session demonstrated how TA can be adapted to different institutional settings and help bridge the gap between rapidly evolving technologies and delayed regulatory responses, especially where comparative legal frameworks prove inadequate. In the context of global democratic crises, global TA was presented as a space for mutual learning and support, also offering an opportunity to rethink democratic modernities beyond Western-centric models.

The closing plenary session on “Global Organisations and TA” featured a round-table discussion with Robinson (OECD), Dro (EU), Lim (UNCTAD), Ladikas (globalTA), and Kebede (African Union). The discussion reaffirmed that TA has long been practized globally – albeit without being labelled as such – through diverse regional and institutional efforts. The disconnect between top-down international structures and bottom-up, community-based TA initiatives was identified as a key challenge. Questions emerged around how to effectively translate TA into actionable, context-sensitive policies, particularly in developing countries, without reproducing neocolonial dynamics or reinforcing relative competitive disadvantages. Nevertheless, international TA was also seen as an asset to strengthen continental networks and international organisations.

The disconnect between top-down international structures and bottom-up, community-based technology assessment initiatives was identified as a key challenge.

Sub-theme 1 “Strengthening TA Worldwide” was a key focus of all these plenaries, while sub-theme 2 ”Institutionalizing TA Globally” was primarily addressed in the third plenary. Sub-theme 1 was also the main focus of two panel discussions focusing on the institutional aspect of TA across the globe (Fig. 1). The panellists highlighted that, in many countries, there are no institutions explicitly dedicated to TA, but rather institutions of different kinds that use TA-like procedures with similar goals. In the discussion, such constellations were labelled not only as ‘TA-like’ but also as ‘hidden TA’. To establish a global TA network, it is necessary to develop values and principles for cooperation, as well as to formulate region-specific needs, capacities, and concerns.

Moreover, three sessions covered TA at various locations worldwide, including Asia, Australia, and Oceania, both the Americas, and Europe. In the first of these sessions ‘Technology Needs Assessment’ was introduced as a complementary approach. This approach has been adopted in over 100 developing countries since 2009, including more recently Oceania. Further presentations outlined the development of a complex TA landscape in South Korea, as well as the evolution and ongoing expansion of TA in Japan, from academic discourse to an institutionalized policy tool.

Regarding sub-theme 3 “TA Paradigms” the various inputs on concepts and methodologies that allow for and foster a global scope proved very interesting. Presentations introducing the concept of planetary health as an analytical lens for TA emphasized the need to acknowledge planetary boundaries and the global and local depletion of resources. Two sessions were dedicated to a globally robust ethical perspective. Presentations addressed the conundrum of reconciling the general advocacy for universal ethical standards with the need to adjust ethical paradigms to local cultural contexts. Participants agreed that ethics-in-context hinges on process qualities rather than product qualities; it is best achieved through mutual learning experiences rather than top-down endeavours and checklists. The question of how to organize such mutual learning experiences on a multi-local or even global scale emerged as a central challenge.

Two sessions dedicated to TA methodology showed that TA methods are generally well-suited for supporting international cooperation as they ‘travel’ easily. As they get adapted and modified locally, they can trigger productive methodological debates and developments. One workshop stressed that focusing on emotional narratives enables us to move beyond neutral, technocratic language and include a more diverse range of views on technology’s role in society. Two sessions presented results from the rapidly expanding field of hype assessment. These sessions raised questions about the transnational dimension of hypes, their glocal emergence, and agency.

If anything, the lively worldwide engagement with the conference emphasized the timeliness of the theme and the variety of interests in the issues raised. It also demonstrated the necessity of further developing global TA along its many dimensions and via multiple locations. The conference demonstrated that TA can play a crucial role in global capacity building, not only for evidence-informed technology governance, but also for fostering collaborative, democratic, just, peaceful, and sustainable futures. Such an ambition cannot be fulfilled by merely ‘exporting’ and perpetuating models of TA that have been highly successful up to now in distinct geopolitical contexts.

In light of specific techno-political challenges, this insight should serve as a further stimulus to seek transnational exchange, to scrutinize past successes and failures, and to keep up with newly arising issues and hopes. As early as 1979, Chen, a TA scholar at the University of Michigan, summarized that “in industrialized countries, TA consists of policy studies that deal with the side effects of technology. In centrally planned economy countries, TA is considered another tool for social management of technology. For developing countries, TA is expected to help in selecting appropriate technologies for development” (Chen 1979, p. 213). Perhaps today, we need to harness all of these options in all parts of the world alike to target pressing global challenges.