Prof. Dr. Rita Schneider-Sliwa, born 1953, majored in Geography, Geology, and English Studies at RWTH Aachen University. Since 1975 she pursued studies in Geography, Economics and Agricultural Economics at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where she received her Ph.D. in 1982 with a dissertation on rural nonfarm employment and migration in Costa Rica. After a four year assistant professorship at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland she completed her habilitation at the John F.-Kennedy Institute of the Free University of Berlin with a post-doctoral dissertation on US-American urban decline and redevelopment policy. The University of Basel appointed her in 1995 as full Professor of Human Geography/Urban and Regional Studies and Chair. Her areas of expertise in research and teaching are: urban and social geography, regional development, development cooperation, empirical survey research, GIS-applications in social science research. In her twenty-two years of work at the University of Basel Prof. Schneider-Sliwa participated in the design, organization and successful implementation of complex institutional, administrative and curricular restructuring and was responsible for the institute’s operative management, budgeting and personnel. She has advised a large number of graduate students on their Master’s theses for the regional job market in cantonal offices and for the service in high schools. In expert commissions in and outside of Switzerland Prof. Schneider-Sliwa participated in determining long-term directions in research and teaching at other institutions. Prof. Schneider-Sliwa holds Swiss citizenship.