Ashley D'Souza

Meet the Scientist Analyzing Historic Bison DNA to Understand How the Species Rebounded from the Edge of Extinction Smithsonian researcher Sarah Johnson studies bison specimens to understand how the species’s genetic diversity changed after its decline

I'm interning this spring as a science writer for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, and my first story was just published :) www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/nation...

Yvette Cabrera, On Covering the ‘Broccoli’ of Environmental Beats Environmental justice reporting can be emotionally heavy and hard to swallow, but “there are some really uplifting stories,” the KSJ Fellow explains.

Uproot member @ashleydsouza.bsky.social spoke with @ksjatmit.bsky.social Fellow and founding member of The Uproot Project, @ycabreraoc.bsky.social, about the highs and lows of covering the environmental beat. ksj.mit.edu/news/2026/01...

Unholy All plugged up with wood, I feel like a bastardized Pinocchio.

Feeling so happy and grateful because @aaww-nyc.bsky.social's The Margins has nominated my piece, Unholy, for a Pushcart Prize. :) <3
aaww.org/unholy/

I made a podcast about Miyawaki mini-forests that was featured in Brookline.News! Check it out here :)

Bees Check Into Hotels On Farms In New Conservation Project The project finds promising species diversity among cavity-nesting bees — and plenty of parasites.

Bee hotels!!!

Back in September, I wrote about cool bee research happening at the Vermont Center for Ecostudies @vtecostudies.bsky.social 🐝

scopeweb.mit.edu/bees-check-i...

Congratulations to our Class of 2026 Taylor / Blakeslee Fellowship winners! Alex Megerle, Ana Georgescu, and @ashleydsouza.bsky.social all scooped up awards this year. You can read about their wins here: sciwrite.mit.edu/news-events/

🐋 so excited!

Weee that's me! So excited and grateful for this opportunity 🦉

My latest! 🦆🤒

Unholy All plugged up with wood, I feel like a bastardized Pinocchio.

So grateful and joyful that my story found its home in The Margins! My first time publishing fiction. :) Thank you @aaww-nyc.bsky.social!

aaww.org/unholy/

Science journalism becomes plain old journalism "For too long, science journalism has been treated as something distinct, something <em>extra</em> — the domain of specialists writing for audiences who are already deeply interested in and informed…

“For too long, science journalism has been treated as something distinct, something extra — the domain of specialists writing for audiences who are already deeply interested in and informed about science. This is bad," writes @siricarpenter.bsky.social

Communities relearn the habits of local news "If you'd been elected to some local position in the past year, my call was probably your first time ever dealing with a journalist. That had never been true in my past jobs."

"If news outlets only rely on muscle memory and continue doing things exactly as they always did, they will not survive or thrive," @samjmintz.bsky.social writes. "But many of the basic rhythms are important to re-establish."

More photos from the scene by @ashleydsouza.bsky.social

I hung out with a garter snake in the sanctuary for 30 minutes while working on this story, but she did not say anything memorable for me to quote 🐍

It's turkey time! (My latest bird-related piece)

Two poems of mine were just published in "Journal IX: Urban Elegy" by Writers Without Margins. "Flowers" was inspired by a dream I had, and "Mass" was inspired by Alexis Pauline Gumbs's book, "Undrowned". 🐋

one of my favorite stories I've worked on so far