The workshop formula of the ECPR joint sessions usually forces researchers to reshape their intellectual interests to fit a particular workshop theme. Only authors who can convince a workshop director that their stories are pertinent to his or her theme are allowed to participate. At the ECPR meetings in Canterbury in 2001 this strict format was abandoned for the first time, which probably contributed to the merrier-than-usual atmosphere. Many non-mainstream interests that had long been suppressed and maybe even oppressed by ECPR executives were allowed free expression. In the panels organised by the Standing Group on Women and Politics, political theorists blossomed as abundantly as the fuchsias on the campus grounds. This was extraordinary because, as one of them explained to me, it usually took a clever distortion of their real intellectual interests to get a workshop director to accept their papers. In any case, that year's conference schedule offered an enormous range of interesting subjects, leading to tremendous inner conflicts about which workshops to attend. I was particularly torn between gender and the arts.