Samuel Henkin

Principal Research Scientist

Dr. Samuel Henkin is a Principal Research Scientist at NSI, Inc. He is a political geographer with expertise in spatial analysis at the intersection of geopolitics, emerging global security risks like climate change, and national security. Samuel is a multidisciplinary scholar-practitioner with rigorous training and experience in qualitative research approaches and fieldwork that aims to better understand the intricate systems and relationships between socioeconomic, political, and geographical contexts and the complexities that define compounding security risks. Additionally, he has extensive experience developing, implementing, and evaluating capacity-building programming. At NSI, Samuel’s experience and expertise support the US Joint Staff Strategic Multilayer Assessment (SMA) portfolio and contribute to the production of NSI’s conceptual frameworks, ontologies, and models to address broad questions of interest to the national security and defense community.  

Prior to NSI, Samuel was a Senior Researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) and a Professor of Security and Terrorism Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He also served as a Professor of Political Science at George Washington University in Washington, DC. He earned his PhD in Geography from the University of Kansas, where he studied conflict, security sector reform, and global geopolitics.