This conference is a major node of scientific communication. Not only of new or emerging knowledge, but of tacit knowledge concerning science-specific social norms, hierarchies, and identities. For young researchers, it may function as a kind of finishing school that prepares them to become members of an international academic community. To other researchers – depending on all intersectional categories of exclusion it conveys the message that they do not belong. This conference is hence indicative of how scientific cultures have varied over time and (despite being “international”) place.  Beside the communication of knowledge and norms, it promotes broader agendas relating to the internal affairs of scientific communities and to their constituencies: commercial, political, diplomatic, or public.