Nate Schenkkan

Nate Schenkkan (@nateschenkkan) is Senior Director of Research at Freedom House. Along with Yana Gorokhovskaia and Grady Vaughan, he co-authored the 2023 report Still Not Safe: Transnational Repression in 2022.

Schenkkan previously served as the Director of Research Strategy at Freedom House, where he began working on the topic of transnational repression, or the targeting of exiles and diasporas. He also previously served as the Project Director for Nations in Transit, and as Senior Program Officer for Freedom House’s Eurasia programs, covering Central Asia and Turkey. He was the lead researcher and co-author of two Freedom House special reports, The Struggle for Turkey’s Internet and Democracy in Crisis: Corruption, Media and Power in Turkey.

Prior to joining Freedom House in 2012, he worked as a journalist in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. He has been published in Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, Eurasianet, World Politics Review, and Russian Analytical Digest.