Academic conference (9)
I believe the answer is:
symposium
'academic conference' is the definition.
(I know that academic conference can be written as symposium)
This is the entire clue.
(Other definitions for symposium that I've seen before include "Conference for the public discussion of a topic" , "mass meeting" , "Meeting or conference for discussion of a topic" , "Conference on academic topic" , "Specialist conference" .)