[Picture of me] [Structural Proof Theory] [Structural Proof Theory] [Mathesis Universalis, Computability and Proof]

Sara Negri


Department of Philosophy, P.O.Box 24 (Unioninkatu 40 A), 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
Telephone: + 358 - 294129220
Fax : + 358 - 9 - 191 28060
E-mail : myfirstname"dot"mylastname"at"helsinki"dot"fi
Gmail: mylastname"dot"myfirstname"at"gmail"dot"com (if you use my gmail address, be careful with the order, else the message will go to another Sara Negri, I'll never see it, and you'll think I am a rude person who doesn't reply!)
Office hour: Thursday 13-14

My research, in brief. My recent research is aimed at bridging the gaps between the normative, the descriptive, and the deductive aspects of modal and related logics.

The early years of modal logic saw the characterisation of its basic notions in terms of the axiomatic method. Later, with the invention of Hintikka-Kripke's semantics, semantical methods became the dominant approach of philosophers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. These methods, however, do not reflect the structure of the inferential processes that are necessarily connected to a logical representation.

Here modern proof theory comes to rescue; in fact, it was born out of dissatisfaction with the axiomatic logical method in view of a faithful presentation of the processes of logical inference.

My early work in this area, from 1997 to 2003, has been mainly in pure proof theory, in the tradition of Gentzen, Ketonen, Dragalin and Troelstra. In 2003, I found a way of extending the results for pure predicate logic to logics that can be characterized in terms of Kripke semantics. With this in hand, I had a clue to develop inferential systems for modal logic, which at that time was considered impossible by many.

A decisive step in the programme I carried out subsequently was the formulation of systems of basic modal logic as systems of rules of proof within a well-developed methodology for the analysis of the structure of proofs. The seminal paper in the topic appeared in 2005 and has become a widely cited and very influential work and the basis of several doctoral theses, both in Finland and abroad; an exposition forms the fourth part of my monograph "Proof Analysis" with Jan von Plato.

Recently, I have extended this line of research both in scope and methodology, with the development of a more fine-grained topological semantics to cover counterfactual reasoning, non-normal modalities, doxastic notions and epistemic dynamics.

Since 1.8.2015 I am professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Philosophy Unit of the Department of Philosophy, History and Culture of the University of Helsinki. Previously I have been a Researcher/Senior Researcher since 1996 and Logiikan Dosentti (Adjunct Professor in Logic) since 1998 in the same department, and research fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies from 2014 to 2015. I obtained a Ph.D. in mathematical logic at the University of Padova in 1996. I visited various universities (Amsterdam, Chalmers, St Andrews, Toulouse), have been a research associate at the Department of Computing of the Imperial College in London, a Humboldt Fellow at the Department of Mathematics of LMU in Munich, and a visiting scientist at the Mittag-Leffler mathematical research institute in Stockholm and at the Hausdorff Research Institute for Mathematics in Bonn. Besides teaching at the University of Helsinki, I have held a number of specialized courses in Summer Schools and invited lecture series to students from mathematics, philosophy and computer science. I have consolidated experience of reaserch group leadership and have supervised five doctoral dissertations.

During 2013-2014 I have obtained the National Scientific Qualification to associate and full professorship in Italian Universities for the academic fields of ''Logica Matematica e Matematiche Complementari (01/A1)'' and ''Logica, Storia e Filosofia della Scienza (11/C2)'', and to associate professorship in ''Informatica (01/B1)''.

CV (pdf).

New project (2017-2021): Modalities and conditionals: Systematic and historical studies

I am representative for Finland for the European research network on types for programming and verification (EUTYPES) COST action

Teaching 2018/2019:


[reflection]