Announcing the 2020 PON Summer Fellows

By — on / Awards, Grants, and Fellowships, Summer Fellowship Grants

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PON offers fellowship grants to students at Harvard University, MIT, Tufts University and other Boston-area schools who are doing internships or undertaking summer research projects in negotiation and dispute resolution in partnership with public, nonprofit or academic organizations. The Summer Fellowship Program’s emphasis is on advancing the links between scholarship and practice in negotiation and dispute resolution by supporting students interested in exploring career paths, either professional or academic, in this field. Through this program, PON hopes to prepare students to assume leadership positions in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution, to forge new links between our academic community and worldwide organizations involved in the practice of negotiation and dispute resolution, and to encourage students to reach for opportunities that would otherwise not be available to them due to financial constraints.

We are excited to announce our 2020 PON Summer Fellows:

Julianna Brill
The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

Julianna Brill is a first-year Master’s candidate at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University pursuing a dual-degree in both Conflict Resolution & Coexistence and Sustainable International Development. This summer, Brill will be working remotely to build a clinical mediation program at the Heller School that will provide the Brandeis community with peer mediation. The program plans to partner with members of the Waltham community to provide mediation services to local schools, residents, and organizations. It will be a priority to provide a diverse mediators roster to fill a key gap in conflict resolution services in the Boston area. This program will help expand the clinical opportunities available to students outside of the central Boston area while simultaneously providing free conflict prevention and mediation services to the surrounding local community.

Maarten H. Deschaumes
Harvard University Graduate School of Design

Maarten Deschaumes is a Real Estate Finance and Development student at Harvard University. He is concentrating on urban development and investment through interdisciplinary coursework at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Business School. His fellowship project investigates the intersection of real estate and law, namely tenant-landlord negotiation and dispute resolution strategies in tightly regulated housing markets like San Francisco and Los Angeles. Prior to Harvard, Deschaumes was the Principal and Real Estate Broker of Record of Lands End Real Estate, a real estate investment advisory and brokerage company. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Entrepreneurship at the University of California, Los Angeles, while completing graduate real estate and finance coursework at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Deschaumes was licensed as a California real estate broker shortly after his undergraduate studies, making him the youngest broker in California.

Rob Grace
Brown University

Rob Grace is a Graduate Research Fellow at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, a USIP-Minerva Peace Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace, and a doctoral candidate in political science at Brown University. He also conducts research on the politics of humanitarian action for the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative and the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Studies, based at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University. Grace co-edited the HPCR Practitioner’s Handbook on Monitoring, Reporting, and Fact-finding, published in 2017. He has published works in Negotiation Journal, Journal of Conflict & Security Law, World Health & Population, the European Society of International Law, Professionals in Humanitarian Assistance and Protection, the Foreign Policy Association, and Foreign Policy in Focus. Additionally, he co-teaches a graduate course on international disaster management at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. This summer he will be collaborating with Professor Alain Lempereur on a research project examining Henry Dunant—one of the founders of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement—as a humanitarian negotiator. This historical humanitarian negotiation case study will analyze Dunant’s frontline negotiations at the Battle of Solferino in 1859, as well as negotiations that Dunant undertook at the diplomatic level in the mid-19th century, a crucial point in the evolution of international humanitarian action.

Emma Lewis
Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University

Emma Lewis is a Master in Design Studies student in Critical Conservation at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Harvard University. Her research focuses on cultural sustainability and dispute resolution for groups experiencing displacement. She is interested in the relationship between physical place and identity, and in the mediation of disputes in which memory and cultural resources play primary roles. This summer, she will work with the Consensus Building Institute in Cambridge, MA, on projects related to the cultural dimensions of resettlement decisions for communities affected by climate change. In particular, she will research the ongoing climate retreat negotiations between the Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribe and the State of Louisiana. This research will center on the ecological and social knowledge of those living on Isle de Jean Charles, and will create frameworks for culturally-informed climate response processes for groups living in vulnerable coastal areas. Lewis was a 2018-2019 Fulbright Research Scholar to India, where she studied the childhood experiences of young reincarnated Buddhist lamas in India’s Tibetan diaspora communities. Previously, she worked managing a digital text preservation project with the United States Agency for International Development in Tibet, and produced a documentary on digital preservation in Qinghai Province, China. She has worked with communities on projects in China, India, Laos, Mexico, Thailand, and the United Kingdom, and is passionate about international dialogue and exchange. Lewis is a trained mediator with the Harvard Mediation Program, and a member of the HMP Training Corps.

Sonia Niżnik
The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis University

Sonia is a Fulbright Scholar and Master’s Candidate in Conflict Resolution at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. Her academic and professional interest lies in complex international multiparty negotiations with a focus on global affairs and development grounded in her professional experience at the European Parliament and the United Nations. Niżnik has previously held positions with policy think tanks and was based in Brussels, Geneva, and Vienna. This summer, she will be working on a research project focusing on the negotiation dynamics of UN Security Council statements on gender and conflict. By concentrating on conflict-related sexual violence against men and boys, the aim is to explore how the taboo surrounding this issue might have impacted the negotiation process and outcomes.

Click here for additional information about our Summer Fellowship program.

The Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School
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