Amit Kaushik, a PhD candidate in ICON and Anthropology, recently co-authored two papers published in Conservation Biology as part of the Special Issue: Trends and Future Directions in the Conservation Social Sciences. These publications reflect ongoing collaborations within the Society for Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group (SSWG), where Amit currently serves as a board member. Conservation and the social sciences revisited examines the role of social sciences in conservation, highlighting the achievements of the Society for Conservation Biology's (SCB) Social Science Working Group (SSWG) in mainstreaming conservation social science (CSS) over the past two decades. It emphasizes the ongoing necessity to further integrate CSS beyond the SCB, address a quantitative bias in the field, and amplify marginalized voices to ensure more effective, just, and inclusive conservation outcomes. Essential skills for the training of conservation social scientists is a survey of conservation professionals revealing that soft skills, particularly cultural awareness, people management, and networking, are considered more essential than technical skills for early career conservation social scientists to be effective, and these soft skills are also perceived as the most challenging to develop through on-the-job training.
