Who we are
Maria Luisa Russo
She is an expert in conservation, management and promotion of archive and library heritage. The specialization achieved through her studies, up to the PhD, is strengthened by long work experience in Italy and abroad. Her international work has focused on cultural heritage in crisis areas, particularly in Mali and the Middle East. In Mali she is field coordinator for the University of Hamburg-Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and has coordinated several projects for the safeguarding and conservation of the manuscripts of Timbuktu and other areas of Mali, also in collaboration with UNESCO; in East Jerusalem and Acre (Israel) she is instructor and consultant for two projects on written heritage. In Italy she is coordinator of the project for the census of ancient bookbindings in Piedmont and lecturer at the master’s degree course in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage of Venaria Reale (SUSCOR). She has worked as a consultant, expert and instructor for Regione Piemonte, the University of Turin, the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, the State Conservatory of Music of Turin, the Capitolare Library of Verona, the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (Minnesota, USA); she has authored several publications and is speaker at various conferences in the field.
Timoty Leonardi
Director of the Capitolare Library Foundation of Verona since 2023. Previously he was Project Manager of the same Foundation and, until 2020, Director of the Fondazione Museo del Tesoro del Duomo e Archivio Capitolare of Vercelli. Co-founder of the cultural association AMALIA (Archivi Manoscritti Libri Antichi); visiting fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago with the research project Early Bookbindings on Incunabula in the John M. Wing Collection: A Working Census. For several years he has been contract teacher of the course in Contemporary Museology at the European Media Academy of Fine Arts in Novara. Since 2010, project manager and executive editor of the project for the census of ancient bookbindings in Piedmont, promoted by the then Superintendence of Library Heritage of the Piedmont Region and by the Centro Studi Piemontesi. Member of the Board of Directors of the Vercelli Historical Society and of the Council of the Bernstein Project. The Memory of Paper. Member of the scientific committee of the Ius Illuminatum project - NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities of Lisbon. As a consultant, he is involved in various research projects in the field of science-bibliography and museums with other Italian and foreign cultural and university entities, including UCLA and the Sorbonne University. He has been speaker in several conferences and published several articles on the history of books, the paper trade and the study of bookbindings.
Vera Favro
She is librarian and archivist; she graduated in Art history and then specialized in cataloguing of ancient books; always attentive to the history and management of cultural heritage, she has also developed her training in the field of book preservation and conservation. A founding member of the Coop. Culturalpe, since 2009 she has dealt with projects related to the protection of Cultural Heritage for several customers, including Dioceses of the Piedmont area (Diocese of Susa, Pinerolo, Saluzzo, Fossano, Ivrea), the Court of Appeal of Turin, the Reale Mutua society, the Centro Studi Piemontesi, and the Pinerolo network centre. She annually takes care of organizing small exhibitions dedicated to the ancient book at the Diocesan Library of Pinerolo and is a lecturer in book preservation and conservation at the course for librarians co-financed by the Piedmont Region and organized by the centre Casa di Carità Arti e Mestieri.
Giorgio Mantovani
He is a journalist; he graduated in Italian Literature and is currently the editorial director of a company based in Turin that deals with medical and scientific education and information. He is in charge of important publishing and professional updating initiatives at a national and international level, done on new digital technologies. He has always combined his passion for literature and historical-literary research with an equal passion for editorial work, which he has carried out in various fields and through different stages – from editing to printing, from the graphic project to distribution, from paper to digital publishing, to the web. During his research in Italian literature be discovered three letters by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, to Alessandro Manzoni, preserved at the Braidense library in Milan and published in the review Italian Quarterly, by the Dept. of Italian of Rutgers University (NJ, USA ); he was curator of an exhibition and conference dedicated to the contemporary poetry book at the National Library of Turin, attended by contemporary poets.
