Reasoning, to derive conclusions from facts, is a fundamental task in Artificial Intelligence, arising in a wide range of applications from Robotics to Expert Systems. The aim of this project is to devise new efficient algorithms for real-world reasoning problems and to get new insights into the question of what makes a reasoning problem hard, and what makes it easy. As key to novel and groundbreaking results we propose to study reasoning problems within the framework of Parameterized Complexity, a new and rapidly emerging field of Algorithms and Complexity. Parameterized Complexity takes structural aspects of problem instances into account which are most significant for empirically observed problem-hardness. Most of the considered reasoning problems are intractable in general, but the real-world context of their origin provides structural information that can be made accessible to algorithms in form of parameters. This makes Parameterized Complexity an ideal setting for the analysis and efficient solution of these problems. A study of the Parameterized Complexity of reasoning problems that covers theoretical and empirical aspects is so far outstanding. This proposal sets out to do exactly this and has therefore a great potential for groundbreaking new results. The proposed research aims at a significant impact on the research culture by setting the grounds for a closer cooperation between theorists and practitioners.