PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Giovanni Casini

Giovanni Casini is a researcher in knowledge representation whose work develops formal approaches to defeasible and conditional reasoning. He completed a PhD in Philosophy at the University of Pisa, and his 2008 doctoral thesis explored connections between default-assumption and preferential approaches to defeasible reasoning. He coauthored papers on belief change and contextual conditionals and presented a Cape-KR tutorial on conditional reasoning in 2025. His honorary research associate appointment at the University of Cape Town runs from January 2025 through December 2029. As of October 2026, he is a researcher in ISTI-CNR's InfraScience group, where his work studies Rational Closure for DL-Lite.

Now at
University of Cape Town and Institute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of Italy
Works
69
Citations
667
h-index
13
Badges

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 22 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. September 2008

    A thesis on defeasible reasoning

    In September 2008, his doctoral thesis at the University of Pisa's Department of Philosophy explores connections between default-assumption and preferential approaches to defeasible reasoning. Mauro Mariani supervises the work.

  2. 2015–2019

    Postdoctoral work in Luxembourg

    From 2015 to 2019, he works as a postdoctoral researcher in the University of Luxembourg's Individual and Collective Reasoning group.

  3. 2017

    Preferential belief change

    In 2017, he and Thomas Meyer coauthor “Belief Change in a Preferential Non-monotonic Framework.” The paper adapts the AGM approach to belief change within preferential non-monotonic reasoning and defines expansion, contraction and revision operators with corresponding representation results.

  4. 2021

    Contextual conditional reasoning

    In 2021, he coauthors “Contextual Conditional Reasoning” with Thomas Meyer and Ivan Varzinczak. The paper adds context as a parameter to conditional reasoning and distinguishes expectations from counterfactuals.

  5. 2025

    Conditional reasoning tutorial

    In 2025, he presents the Cape-KR tutorial “Overview on Conditional Reasoning in Knowledge Representation.” He holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Pisa and has held research posts at Scuola Normale Superiore, the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), the University of Pretoria and the University of Luxembourg. His expertise includes defeasible reasoning, conditional reasoning and belief revision, with a focus on OWL-related logical languages.

  6. January 2025–December 2029

    Honorary appointment at UCT

    He becomes an honorary research associate at the University of Cape Town in January 2025, with the appointment running through December 2029.

  7. June 2026

    Rational Closure for DL-Lite

    In June 2026, he and Umberto Straccia study Rational Closure for the core and Horn variants of DL-Lite. Their paper analyzes instance checking and conjunctive-query answering under Rational Closure.

  8. As of October 2026

    Researcher at ISTI-CNR

    As of October 2026, he is a researcher in Infrastructures for Science (InfraScience) at ISTI-CNR in Pisa.

Career

  1. Since 2025University of Cape TownHonorary Research Associate
  2. NowInstitute of Information Science and Technologies of the National Research Council of ItalyResearcher
  3. 2020–2025National Research Council
  4. 2015University of PretoriaResearcher
  5. 2015–2019University of LuxembourgPostdoctoral Researcher
  6. 2011–2015Council for Scientific and Industrial ResearchResearcher
  7. 2011–2014University of KwaZulu-Natal
  8. 2010Scuola Normale SuperioreResearcher

Education

  1. University of PisaPhD

From the biography and OpenAlex affiliations (the years of papers that list the organization), so some years are approximate.

  1. More people shaping AI studied at Massachusetts Institute of Technology than at any other institutionIncludes University of Cape Town. We estimate where the people shaping AI studied and where their careers led. Massachusetts Institute of Technology leads with 467 former students, including 291 recorded doctorates.
  2. The company share of AI researchers’ top papers was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974Includes University of Cape Town. We estimate where the people shaping AI worked when their most-cited papers appeared: the company share was 31% in 2020–2024 and 8% in 1970–1974, and Google led all organizations in 2020–2024.
  3. The United States employs an estimated 48% of people shaping AIIncludes National Research Council. We estimate where the people shaping AI work today, how universities, companies and research institutes split across countries, and how country shares have changed since the 1960s.
  4. Google has the highest combined h-index among AI organizationsIncludes National Research Council. We estimate that Google holds the highest combined h-index at 8,016, while universities account for 73% of the deduplicated total across AI organizations.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Giovanni Casini yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Tesi recenti di Logica ailalogica.it. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. People - Individual and Collective Reasoning (ICR) icr.uni.lu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Belief Change in a Preferential Non-monotonic Framework | CORDIS cordis.europa.eu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Belief Change in a Preferential Non-monotonic Framework | IJCAI ijcai.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Contextual Conditional Reasoning | Proceedings of the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence ojs.aaai.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Tutorials - 2025 Cape-KR 2025.cape-kr.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. Giovanni Casini | School of Information Technology sit.uct.ac.za. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Tractable Reasoning and Conjunctive Query Answering for Defeasible DL-Lite under Rational Closure arxiv.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. ISTI-CNR - People detail: Giovanni Casini isti.cnr.it. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. People - InfraScience infrascience.isti.cnr.it. Checked 22 October 2026.