Laura Tosi (Ca’ Foscari – University of Venice)

Laura Tosi is Full Professor of English Literature at the University of Venice – Ca’ Foscari. She specializes in Elizabethan, Jacobean and Caroline Literature, and children’s literature. She is currently working on a comparative analysis of nineteenth-century children’s fantasy traditions in Italy and England. Her latest monograph study (McFarland, 2018, with Peter Hunt) is entitled The Fabulous Journeys of Alice and Pinocchio: the Parallel Worlds of National and Transnational Classic Fantasies.

 

Anna Kraczyna, translator of The Adventures of Pinocchio

Anna Kraczyna was born and raised in Florence, Italy, by American artist parents. A dual American Italian citizen, she is bilingual and bicultural and fluent in French. She owes her surname to her Russian émigré grandparents. Graduated with honors in Italian Literature from the University of Florence, Kraczyna has been a translator and a simultaneous interpreter for over thirty years, and she lectures on Italian language, literature, and culture at American universities and colleges in Florence. She has taught at the Florentine campuses of Stanford University and Sarah Lawrence College.

Kraczyna’s extensive research on the linguistic and cultural aspects of The Adventures of
Pinocchio led to her coauthored article for The New York Times on Collodi’s masterpiece in 2019 and, in 2021, to the coauthored annotated translation of The Adventures of Pinocchio for Penguin Classics, which has won praise from a wide range of leading publications including the Times Literary Supplement, Smithsonian Magazine, The Atlantic, the London Sunday Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist. Kraczyna lectures on the true messages of The Adventures of Pinocchio at universities and colleges (e.g. NYU, Sarah Lawrence College, Drew University, Rutgers University) and other cultural organizations (e.g. Istituto Italiano di Cultura in San Francisco, the British Institute in Florence, the Foreign Press Association in Rome, the American Business Circle in Milan, Casa Italiana Merilli-Marimò NYU in New York, Roundtable at 92Y in New York) both in Italy and the US.

 

Luca Viganò (King’s College London)

Luca Viganò is Professor at the Department of Informatics of King’s College London, UK, where he heads the Cybersecurity Group. His research focuses on formal analysis of cybersecurity and privacy, and on explainable cybersecurity, where, in addition to more formal approaches, he has been investigating how fairy tales, films and other kinds of artworks can be used to explain cybersecurity and how telling (i.e., explaining notions in a formal, technical way) can be paired with showing through different forms of storytelling.
Luca is also a playwright and screenwriter. His works have been published and produced in Italy, the UK and Russia. His first short film in English, “The First”, explores a future scenario where the rights of sentient beings clash with freedom, identity and ethical judgment.

 

Massimo Riva (Brown University)

Massimo Riva is Professor of Italian Studies, Coordinator of the Virtual Humanities Lab, and Affiliated Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University. His latest major publication, a digital monograph entitled Shadow Plays: Virtual Realities in an Analog World published by Stanford University Press in 2022, is the winner of a 2023 Prose Award from the Association of American Publishers and a finalist for the 2024 American Council of Learned Societies Open Access Book Prize.