Saskia Brechenmacher is a senior fellow in Carnegie’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program, where her research focuses on gender, civil society, and democratic governance. She has advised major governmental and private funders on strategies to advance women’s political participation and defend civic space in countries experiencing democratic backsliding. Her writing has been published in Foreign Policy, Just Security, National Interest, the Hill, World Politics Review, Open Democracy, and elsewhere. She is the co-author (with Katherine Mann) of Aiding Empowerment: Democracy Promotion and Gender Equality in Politics, published with Oxford University Press in 2024. Brechenmacher currently serves on the board of directors of the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law and as a member of the Advisory Group of the OECD’s Civic Space Observatory. She is a 2017 Atlantik-Brücke Young Leader and a Humanity in Action Senior Fellow and previously worked for the World Peace Foundation, the Henry J. Leir Institute for Migration and Human Security at Tufts University, and Carnegie Europe.
She holds a BA from Brown University, an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where she studied as a Gates Cambridge Scholar.
