Flavia Martinelli is Professor at the Università Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Italy, where she currently teaches Policies and Strategies for Territorial Cohesion. She has worked on regional development processes, disparities, and policies, with particular attention to the historically lagging South of Italy, in a comparative perspective. She has been involved in several EU-funded collaborative projects and is currently Chair of a COST Action. In recent years her work has focused on the implications of social services in socio-economic development, as well as territorial cohesion.