Silvia Staub-Bernasconi's (b. 1936) career in social work education was defined by her role as professor at Zurich School of Social Work from 1967-97. After she qualified in social work at this school, she studied social work (1963-67) on a United Nations Fellowship at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, and at Columbia University, New York. In Zurich, she became the first street social worker and worked with migrants. In the US, she worked with a group of black women and in community work on the Lower East Side. Coming back to Zurich, she studied sociology, social ethics and educational psychology at the University of Zurich, where she received her PhD (1979), followed by her habilitation in 1996 at the Technical University of Berlin. After 30 years of professorship at the Zurich School, teaching and supervising social work with groups and with communities, she became a professor at the Technical University Berlin from 1997 until 2003. Her main topics were theories of social problems, social work as discipline and profession and social work as human rights profession. She has been on the academic board and teaching staff of the International Doctoral Studies in Social Work (INDOSOW), which involved several European universities.

When did you receive the award and what has it meant to you?

I received it in 2010 at the World Conference in Hong Kong. The first memory, which came to my mind when I learned I was elected, was a dinner with Katherine Kendall, Lynne Healy and some other colleagues at the IASSW Conference in 2001 in Montpellier, France. We talked about many things, but I was especially impressed with Katherine Kendall's historical and current knowledge about the profession and its development. It was the first time I had been invited to one of the many small, informal meetings taking place alongside conferences. Until then, I was just imagining how conference members, especially men, were being effective in networking and making plans. However, this was a most pleasant meeting of women without other goals than sharing experiences and a good dinner.

For me, the award honours my lifelong endeavours to develop a sound theory of social problems as the domain of social work and of social work as a discipline and profession.