Confused? Overview of meeting types

Provides an overview of the seven different meeting types that the CYGNA Women in Academia Network currently offers

Anne-Wil Harzing - Mon 5 Oct 2026 08:22 (updated Mon 5 Oct 2026 16:00)

Are you confused about all the different types of meetings that CYGNA offers? Rest assured, you are not the only one. So, on this page, we try to shed a bit more light on this. First, you can now find our general meeting philosophy here: How are CYGNA meetings different? Second, our meeting types have expanded over the years.

A potted history

In 2014 CYGNA started out as a small group of 8-12 women meeting every other month at London-based institutions. This group grew to 15-25, but we continued to organize five or six London-based meetings every year. But soon we expanded our scope by organising panels and meet-ups at conferences, establishing CYGNA North in 2019 with a well-attended event in Leeds, and offering a full-day writing bootcamp at Middlesex University to celebrate our 5-year anniversary.

When COVID-19 hit, our meetings moved online. We organised no less than sixteen meetings online before getting back face-to-face with other CYGNA members in May 2022. During the COVID-lockdowns, our network also grew rapidly from around 100 – mainly UK-based – members to an international community of nearly 300 members. At present, only half of our members are based in the UK.

Moreover, even though our first post-COVID on-site meeting was well-attended, COVID-19 led to a general shift in meeting cultures in Higher Education. Online meetings rapidly became the default option. So combined with our international membership, this meant that resuming our pre-COVID meeting pattern was no longer an option. Since 2022 CYGNA has thus settled on a pattern of predominantly online meetings, with one or two on-site meetings per year.

Seven meeting types: different format/audience/purpose

However, ever since our new CYGNA Lead Team started in 2023, we have also significantly expanded the variety of meeting formats. Currently, CYGNA organizes the following meetings (in order of their time of introduction).

• Topic-based plenary meetings (every two months): Originally our only meeting type, it is still one of the backbones of our network; we have organised over 70 of these meetings to date. Attendance generally varies from 25 to 60 members, and they can be online or on-site. The 2-hour online meetings typically have a mix of panels, short presentations, and interactive elements. On-site meetings are typically 4-6 hours long and have a significant interactive component. Write-ups for these meetings are created by Anne-Wil and/or the organizers. A summary is here: CYGNA: Women In Academia – plenary meetings.
• CYGNA jam sessions (irregular): Introduced to accommodate the need for a quick discussion about a narrowly defined topic, they can be called by any member. For more details see: What is a CYGNA jam session and how do I organize one? CYGNA jams are currently underused. We therefore strongly encourage members to use them if they have a specific practical academic issue they would like to discuss. They are self-organized by members, but if at all possible one of the Lead Team will join.
• Conference meet-ups (irregular, generally 3-4 a year): Although first introduced in 2019, they have really taken off since 2023. We typically have three to four conference meet-ups every year, organised by volunteer members who are attending the conference. They vary from small informal, ad-hoc meetups to larger groups scheduling an official dinner, or even multiple meet-ups as at the Academy of Management 2025 Copenhagen. For more information see: Can anyone organize a conference meet-up?
• CYG: Teaching & Scholarship Research (every 2-3 months): Our first CYG (= Cygna SIG = Special Interest Group), initiated and spearheaded by Jane Neal-Smith in April 2024. This group holds meetings every two to three months, providing a mix of guest speakers, meet the editors’ sessions, group discussions, and book launches related to teaching & scholarship research. CYG-TSR has its own JICS mailing list. If you want to join, contact Jane Neal-Smith.
• Senior CYG (monthly): Our first career-stage CYG, initiated and spearheaded by Lead Team member Ciara O’Higgins in November 2024. For CYGNA members who are in the later stages of their academic careers, typically at full professorial level, and with considerable leadership experience in academic institutions, e.g. responsible for big research teams, Department heads, (Associate) Deans, Pro-VCs etc. If you want to join, contact Ciara O'Higgins.
• CYGNA Writes (weekly): initiated and spearheaded by Lead Team member Christa Sathish in November 2024, CYGNA Writes provides our CYGNA sisters with a weekly safe space for focused writing. All interested CYGNA members can join, but in order to receive invites you will need to be on the organizers’ mailing list. If you want to join, contact Christa Sathish.
• Informal catch-up meetings (every two months): introduced in September 2026 these meetings replace the new members meetings that we started in 2023. Informal catch-up meetings are online, open to everyone, and are both shorter (one hour) and more informal than our topic-based meetings. They are hosted by one of our CYGNA Lead Team members. For more information see: What are informal catch-up meetings?

In addition to these synchronous meetings, CYGNA also features two asynchronous online meeting places:

• Our CYGNA-wide mailing list. This is where we circulate meeting invites for meetings open to all members, invitations for conference meet-ups, anything on gender in academia, job opportunities, special issues, resources on academic careers and skills, and much more. You can read more about this here: Can anyone send an email to the CYGNA mailing list?
• CYGNA Discussion Forum – our CYGNA closed LinkedIn Group. You can use this closed LinkedIn Group to circulate anything you would normally send to the mailing list. However, this Group also provides a space for more interactive discussion, videos, polls, and any other resources that cannot easily be shared by email. You can read more about its functions here: What is the CYGNA closed LinkedIn group for?
• Finally, CYGNA facilitates a multitude of smaller ad-hoc workshop collaborations, seminar opportunities, teaching collaborations, writing partnerships, panels at conferences, and many other one-to-one partnerships. Most of these are invisible to other CYGNA members and even to the CYGNA Lead Team, but some have been written up here: CYGNA collaborations.

Related video