Well, this post is pretty late, considering the Special Topics Network happened almost a year ago!  But, anyway… last July, 2017, I was fortunate enough to attend the ESEB Special Topics Network: ‘Linking local adaptation with the evolution of sex differences’, held at Lund University, Sweden. I got to meet and get to know a lot of really wonderful colleagues around the world during a really stimulating, and rather whirlwind week of geekery. One of the concrete outcomes of the Network was the decision to try and put together a Special Issue for The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B using collaborations among the attendees as a core for the issue. I was involved in two groups. The first focused on developing new population genetic theory for the evolution of autosomal and X-linked chromosomal inversions during the process of adaptation. The most impressive part of the whole experience for me has been how well the group has worked together and succeeded in developing a really cool study which we recently submitted for review. While there, I also felt I had to be the standard bearer for the poor, underrepresented hermaphrodites, and so I spearheaded another project looking at the consequences of spatially variable sex-specific selection, and local adaptation in species without separate sexes. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Special Issue, in which both of these studies will be published, hopefully sometime in the later half of 2018.