Alf Jerve is a Member of the World Bank Inspection Panel since 2008. He has three decades of research and operational experience in the field of development, including extensive field research in Africa and Asia. His academic research interests are focused on rural development, decentralization and poverty reduction, and issues of ownership and accountability in development aid cooperation. From 1993 to 1995, he worked with the World Bank on social safeguards, and resettlement and rehabilitation issues in particular. In 1995 he became Assistant Director, and later Director in 2005 and 2006, at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, an internationally recognized development research institution. Alf graduated from the University of Bergen, Norway, in 1982 with a doctoral degree in Social Anthropology and the equivalent of a Master's Degree in Environmental Science and Biology.