Saskia Brechenmacher is a Fellow in the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she focuses on trends in democracy, gender equality, and civic space around the world. She is also a Gates Cambridge Scholar at the University of Cambridge, researching violence against women in politics and resistance to women’s political participation. Her writing has been published in Foreign Policy, Just Security, the National Interest, the Hill, and Open Democracy, among other outlets. She has advised major governmental and private funders on strategies to protect and defend civic space and advance women’s political participation and currently serves on the Advisory Group of the OECD’s Civic Space Observatory.

Prior to joining Carnegie, Brechenmacher worked at the World Peace Foundation, the Henry J. Leir Institute at Tufts University, and the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung in London. She is a 2017 Atlantik-Brücke Young Leader and a Humanity in Action Senior Fellow. Originally from Germany, she attended the United World College in Mostar, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and holds an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a B.A. from Brown University.