The seminar aims at illuminating how key international organizations, i.e. UNESCO, OECD and the EU, have shaped contemporary lifelong learning policy discourses on a global scale. The seminar focuses on how adult education, lifelong education and lifelong learning have been (re)conceptualized by major international organizations in the field of global educational governance since the mid 1960s. In doing so, the seminar pays special attention to teacing out conceptual tensions between adult education, lifelong education and lifelong learning from key policy texts and events produced by the international organizations. It shows how lifelong learning has been a contested field but also that even though each international organization has molded its own policy concept of adult education and lifelong education/learning, institutional learning has been taking place across the organizations. The seminar also focuses on tools and activities employed by international organizations which contribute to the framing of adult education and lifelong education/learning.