Conflicts between people over wildlife and its management can be very acute, with negative impacts on livelihoods, relationships, wellbeing and conservation. There is much we can learn from social sciences both in the better understanding of conflicts in terms of who the actors are, what their values, attitudes, goals and positions are, and the context within which the conflicts occur, but also in testing out, evaluating and implementing approaches for the management of conflicts. In this talk, I will start with an overview of when and how social sciences can feed into conflict science, before outlining examples from a range of different contexts, including the return of wolves in Italy, a One Health approach in India to understand and address a zoonotic disease, controversies around reintroductions in Scotland, conflict transformation processes in France around pesticide use, and a community-based conservation programme around snow leopard conservation in the Himalayas. Approaches explored in these different contexts will include social network analysis, the community voice method, multi-criteria decision analysis, transformation labs, and narratives. I will end with a reflection on conflict transformation as a theoretical and practical approach that sees conflicts are a positive motor for change.