Zvi Altman

Zvi's dissertation is entitled Breaking the Barriers of Convention: Towards a Multilateral Legalistic Dispute Settlement Procedure for Resolving International Tax Disputes. He argues that the current system - based solely on negotiation between tax authorities - is sorely inefficient in resolving such conflicts and fails to achieve the ultimate purpose of tax treaties. Zvi contends that a multilateral institution applying a multi-stage process based on consultation, arbitration, and adjudication would provide a better forum for dispute settlement. He intends to support his conclusions by way of a cost benefit analysis based on alternative dispute resolution scholarship, institutionalist international relations theories, past experience, and empirical analysis of various international dispute settlement procedures.

Zvi's academic background includes degrees in law and economics from Bar-Ilan University in Israel. He has published extensively in academic journals and popular newspapers in both Hebrew and English.

Nava Ashraf

As a PON fellow, Nava will continue her dissertation work on the dynamics of decision-making in conditions of poverty and distress. Through an experimental study she is conducting in the Philippines, Nava seeks to better understand the nature of conflict between spouses with differing spending preferences, in order that policymakers might craft more balanced and sustainable poverty-reduction programs in the developing world. In isolating the factors that contribute to household conflict, Nava hopes to advance awareness both about sources of intra-household conflict and bargaining power, and about prospective dispute resolution mechanisms to address such conflicts.

While an undergraduate, Nava interned at the World Bank and helped spearhead the development of a negotiation strategy for Morocco in the Year 2000 Trade Negotiations with the European Union. Her honors thesis on Mercosur and the European Union, and subsequent work on NAFTA, focused on the role that scripts and public international commitment play in multi-national negotiations, as a way of resolving individual countries' conflicting domestic interests about an appropriate future national path.

Ian Wadley

Ian's dissertation, entitled Contested Transboundary Natural Resources - The Common Good and Common Goods examines the evolution of international regimes relating to transboundary natural resources and identifies the key fault-lines that have made these issues particularly resistant to resolution. He advances recommendations for the formulation of dispute resolution mechanisms and management regimes by state, inter-state, and non-state actors in order to foster the peaceful management of transboundary natural resource disputes and the enhancement of domestic and international rule of law.

Ian possesses degrees in law and commerce from Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. He has completed graduate work at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. A native of Australia, Ian was awarded the inaugural Rotary International Foundation Peace Scholarship for 2002-2004.