Miriam Bahagijo's Portfolio

Miriam is an early-career science journalist from Indonesia. Her reporting revolves around environmental stories, namely conservation, wildlife, ecology, and planetary health. Her works have appeared in Think Global Health, Mongabay, EoS, The Revelator, The JakartaPost, and Garda Animalia. She recently got her M.A. in Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting (SHERP) from New York University.

Featured Story

Eos •

Mid-Ocean Ridges Could Be Dispersing Thermophilic Bacteria

When scientists from the University of Calgary recovered samples of dormant, heat-loving bacteria from two locations thousands of kilometers apart in the Atlantic Ocean, they were on a mission to prove something: These two kinds of thermophilic bacteria came from the same place.

Scientists have long suspected that the endospores (a dormant form of bacteria that can survive harsh conditions the bacteria otherwise wouldn’t) at both sites, Svalbard and the Labrador Sea, might share the same warm,...

Op-Ed & Personal Essays

Whiteboard Journal •

I’m 25 Years Old and My Parents Were Divorced Last Year

I think my brother and I kind of see it coming, ever since the repeated fights and how it escalated into something more awful, more frequent, and more upsetting each day.

I remember being afraid to come home and finding out that my parents have just had another fight.

I remember text messaging my brother to ask whether our parents have gotten into yet another argument and thus making the atmosphere at home feels unsettling.

I remember spending Christmas at an apartment with my mother because
Magdalene •

Making Sense of My Mother's Love: Not Always Warm but Ever Evolving

The relationship between parents and children are not all sweet and loving, warm and joyful. It also consists of rage and anguish, tears and regrets. It is a complex and messy part of being human.

Even so, with the realization that all of us are flawed, eventually we learn to come to terms with such condition, just like how I constantly have to make sense of the mother-and-daughter-relationship that I have with my mom.

My mother is not perfect, which is completely fine because growing up made
Magdalene •

Teach the Kids to Fail, And They'll Come Out Stronger

Some time ago I read @humansofny’s caption on Instagram about someone whose mother is a perfectionist. The mother demanded everything to be perfect, so the son always tried to succeed in everything he did.

Then this line struck me, “But one thing I never learned was how to fail.”

Reflecting on that specific line, and my personal experience, it dawned on me that our society is, indeed, too focused on pressuring others to succeed, to the point that we forget to remind them how completely okay it
Magdalene •

Twelve Years a Minority - And Coming Out a More Tolerant Person

I am a Muslim woman who lives in a country with the biggest Muslim population in the world, but I have spent more than half of my lifetime studying in Catholic schools.



After kindergarten, I followed my brother’s footsteps by enrolling in the same private school, Desa Putera, as him. My parents’ decision in choosing a Catholic school was not to expose their children to a diverse environment, at least that’s not the main reason. Rather it was a simple belief that private schools’ quality exce

Feature for JakartaPost

Scienceline Stories

Stories that are originally for class assignments

Scienceline •

It’s hard to name a species — and even harder to rename one - Scienceline

How does a blind cave beetle end up being named after a Nazi dictator? Or a fossil after a famous British broadcaster? 
There is no one answer because the process of naming species — for both scientific and common names — is complex and inconsistent and sometimes produces names that, over time, become offensive. 
Here’s what you should know about how species are named — and occasionally renamed:

Why do species have both scientific and common names?
Many species, like the Slovenian blind cave be...
Scienceline •

After the hurricane came more mosquitoes - Scienceline

Super-charged hurricanes not only wreak havoc in the areas they are passing through, but also give rise to one of the deadliest animals on earth: mosquitoes.
As the world is experiencing a warming climate, we can expect more intense hurricanes, which bring about perfect breeding conditions for mosquitoes, namely increased instances of standing water.

Rising temperatures and precipitation patterns will also continue to affect the spread of mosquitoes into more regions. Certain species of mosquit...

Bahasa Indonesia articles for Garda Animalia

Garda Animalia •

Konsumsi Satwa Eksotis Berisiko Picu Zoonosis dan Pandemi

Selain itu, flu babi juga merupakan zoonosis yang disebabkan oleh virus H1N1 yang berasal dari peternakan babi di Meksiko pada 2009. [1] Grima, Calandra. Zoonosis and the next pandemic: why hindsight must be 2020.https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/science-communication/2021/06/23/zoonosis-and-the-next-pandemic-why-hindsight-must-be-2020/ . …

Laporan UNEP yang diterbitkan di tahun 2020 menyatakan bahwa 60 persen dari penyakit infeksi yang terjadi pada manusia diperkirakan berasal dari hewan. [2] Unite