The Interdisciplinary Field of Technology Assessment in Germany, the EU and Beyond

Technology assessment (TA) is an interdisciplinary field of research that deals with a wide variety of non-technical, e.g. social, political and ethical aspects of scientific and technological developments. It is strongly interdisciplinary, meaning that natural scientists and engineers work together with social scientists, humanities scholars and others. TA can be considered as a subfield of Science and Technology Studies (STS) or as a neighbouring field. The lecture will briefly discuss the relationship between STS and TA. However, the focus will be on the rationales, practices and institutionalisations of TA in Germany, the EU and beyond. At the end of the lecture, the work of TA will be briefly exemplified by describing some current TA activities on neurotechnologies. Christopher Coenen, political scientist, has been working in strongly interdisciplinary technology assessment (TA) for 20 years. At the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology