The academic profession has been long recognized as a pivotal source of belief and identity alongside the discipline and the institution of belonging. However, the ways in which academics as a professional group organize themselves towards common objectives that possibly transcend systems, institutions and disciplines, has not been explored so far. Therefore, the goal of this article is investigate how academics organize themselves in the pursuit of their professional, scientific and scholarly interests outside the university setting and across national higher education systems. We address this question by studying European academic associations. Drawing from World Polity Theory, studies on Professions and Professionalism, as well as on Interest Groups, we derive expectations as to the growth in number of academic associations and their aims. Based on the analysis of 324 associations, our findings show that assuming that the founding of academic associations is related primarily to the emergence or presence of international organizations needs to be revisited, as foundations appear to be affected by other contingent events as well. As to their aims, there is more variety than usually posited and five types of academic associations can be identified. We discuss the implications of on-going European integration in higher education and research from theory and policy perspectives.