Samuel Denney is a nonresident fellow with the Transatlantic Security Initiative in the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is an analyst with Eurasia Group’s consumer and retail practice, where he advises multinational corporations on the changing geopolitical context of supply chains, market access, and reputational risk.

Previously, Denney was a senior research analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he managed the Pivotal States project, examining US global strategy toward emerging powers and great power competitors. He was a 2023-2024 Penn Kemble Forum fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. In 2021, he was one of eight Americans to receive a German Chancellor Fellowship and conducted a yearlong research project examining the impact of domestic extremism and foreign influence efforts on German societal resilience and foreign policy following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He specializes in US foreign policy, transatlantic relations, German domestic politics and foreign policy, and threats to democracy in Europe.

Denney previously worked in the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution as a senior research assistant and later as a senior project coordinator. He was the 2019 Europe fellow for young professionals in foreign policy. His internships include time at the Albright Stonebridge Group, the State Chancellery of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and the German Bundestag’s Committee on European Union Affairs. His publications have appeared in Lawfare, Internationale Politik, RealClearWorld, at the Brookings Institution, at the Center for European Policy Analysis, and at the Heinrich Böll Stiftung.

Denney earned an MA in German and European studies from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a BA in German and European studies from Vanderbilt University. He speaks English, German, and some French.