A cultural evolutionary approach to organising academic meetings

Academic meetings are central to sharing and discussing research, and key events for networking and community-building. Their design shapes interaction patterns and knowledge flow. Drawing on insights from cultural evolution, we outline how meetings can be structured to reduce disciplinary echo chambers and to foster inclusive, interdisciplinary exchange and cumulative knowledge building. Cultural evolution offers tools for understanding how meeting formats shape information transmission, learning, and the persistence of ideas, and how design choices at all stages of the cultural evolutionary process act as selection pressures. For example, meetings aimed at generating new ideas benefit from broad exposure to diverse perspectives and flexible interaction patterns, whereas meetings focused on consolidating knowledge rely on repeated interaction for refinement and alignment. While few researchers organise large-scale conferences, many take on the role of organising symposia, workshops, or lab retreats, where design matters just as much. This guide offers theory-informed, practical principles to support organisers of meetings across diverse formats and constraints.