The latest in a 15-year series of annual Student Conferences on Conservation Science was held in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge on 25–27 March 2014. The conferences are aimed at early-stage researchers in conservation science and this one was attended by over 300 people, including 193 postgraduate students from 60 countries. At the heart of the conference were 31 talks and 109 posters on a vast range of topics, contributed by research students. The conference aims to accept presentations on as many aspects of conservation science as possible, including the social sciences. Every student contributing a talk or poster was given written feedback on their presentation by a senior conservationist.

Intermingled with the student contributions were inspiring plenary lectures given by Professor Chris Johnson (Lessons for conservation from historical and prehistorical changes), Professor Amanda Vincent (Seahorse conservation practice and science), Dr Camilla Toulmin (Incentives for sustainable wildlife use) and Julia Marton-Lefevre (The science–policy interface from an IUCN perspective). There were two workshop sessions, offering eight 90-minute workshops. Experts on writing and publishing papers, fund-raising, designing research projects, statistics, genetics, economics and making conservation work in practice presented workshops with a how-to focus.

A special feature of the conference was the role played by conservation practitioners. Overall, the conference was visited by 79 staff or representatives from 33 conservation agencies, institutes and NGOs, who chaired sessions, ran workshops and engaged student delegates in discussions during breaks. The poster session Who's Who in Conservation? allowed 25 conservation agencies, institutes and NGOs to present their work and answer queries.

The conference had a real buzz as enthusiastic and able scientists worked hard, learned a lot, taught each other a lot and had a good time. The next conference in the Cambridge series will be 25–27 March 2015 (see www.sccs-cam.org). Sister conferences with similar objectives have been held in Bangalore (India; www.sccs-bng.org), New York (USA; symposia.cbc.amnh.org/sccsny), Beijing (China; www.sccs-cam.org) and Brisbane (Australia; sccs-aus.org). Further conferences in these series are also planned.