The World Trade Forum series was established in 1997 with the aim of addressing some of the most pertinent questions facing the global trading system. Who would have thought at that time that the Forum would one day turn to the question of how the World Trade Organization (WTO) is governed, as a result of lack of progress in multilateral trade negotiations and a profound imbalance between the political and judicial branch of the Organization? After nine years of Doha Round negotiations and with major regulatory challenges ahead, we thought that the time was ripe to take stock and to consider the challenges and prospects of governing the WTO. The thirteenth World Trade Forum was held on 25 and 26 September 2009 at the World Trade Institute of the University of Bern and was entitled ‘Making Decisions at the World Trade Organization: Past, Present and Beyond Doha’. The aim was to reflect on the past, to look critically at the current governance challenges and spearhead different paths the WTO could take in the future. For this purpose we invited scholars and experts on international economic organisations to participate. The conference offered a unique platform to exchange ideas and test them with practitioners representing international organisations, official WTO delegations and non-governmental organisations. This participatory mixture served to bridge the existing divide between trade diplomacy and academia. It pushed for cross-fertilisation among various disciplines, most importantly law, economics and international relations.