Our dearest Bruno Bara (1949-2023)
- by Sunny Khemlani
- in News
- posted November 9, 2023
Bruno Bara, our dear friend and colleague, passed away on November 7th, 2023. Bara was warm, jovial, and brimming with energy and ideas. He made fundamental contributions to the study of deductive reasoning in collaboration with his mentors Phil Johnson-Laird, along with many other researchers, including his mentee, Monica Bucciarelli. He taught psychology at the University of Milan, the University of Trieste, the University of Florence, and the University of Turin. At the University of Turin, he served as the Director of the Center for Cognitive Science, and he served as President of the International Association for Cognitive Science.
Bara developed the theory of “cognitive pragmatics”, which describes an integrated account of how agents cooperate to construct meaning from their communicative interactions. He made fundamental contributions to the field of cognitive psychotherapy, and developed an approach that analyzes the cognitive, emotional, and embodied ways in which a therapist and patient develop trust for one another. In recent years, he focused his attention on social cognitive neuroscience, including the neural bases of social interaction in clinical and neurotypical populations.
Bruno passed away on November 7th, 2023, and is survived by his daughters, with whom he traveled the world.