Abstract
Since 1969, the Cocha Cashu Biological Station (EBCC) has focused on studying Amazonian landscapes known for their high biodiversity and low levels of human intervention. To bridge the gap between social research and conservation biology, the Social Sciences for Conservation Course was launched in 2018. In 2025, the course included male and female indigenous youth from the communities surrounding Manu National Park as well as its buffer zone. This course brought together eight Matsigenka students and ten non-indigenous students from diverse educational backgrounds and regions. This paper outlines the methodological framework developed over eight-months, which facilitated a genuine process of co-creation of knowledge that addressed the coexistence of both groups for about one month. It fostered an epistemic dialogue where all participants—indigenous and non-indigenous, university students and non-university students—enhanced their skills as researchers and collaboratively rethought conservation strategies. The course structured multiple activities through which participants engaged with each other’s ways of knowing. These included discussions about conservation perspectives, analysis of the Matsigenka communities’
planes de vida
(community management documents
)
and immersive experiences—such as forest walks and fieldwork in two communities. Through these interactions, indigenous students appropriated and adapted social science research tools to analyze their own realities, while the non-indigenous participants re-situated their theoretical frameworks in relation to lived territorial experiences shared by their colleagues. Dialogue was deepened by methodological strategies that translated academic concepts into locally grounded terms, allowing indigenous knowledge systems to function not only as empirical input but as conceptual frameworks. This process enabled a reconfiguration of roles, where all participants -including the instructors- became learners and knowledge producers. Hence, co-creation in this experience did not result in a co-authored output, but emerged as a relational and processual achievement. It was expressed through the transformation of perspectives, the mutual recognition of epistemic validity, and the rethinking of conservation as a field that must integrate indigenous and scientific knowledge on more equitable terms.