Istituto Italiano di Cultura in collaboration with Librissimi Toronto Italian Book Festival, presents Canadiensis, a talk illustrating a journey across the country.
Canadiensis: Meeting the People Who Make a Country
Saturday May 2, 2026
11:00AM ET
Librissimi Toronto Italian Book Festival
Columbus Centre | Columbus Room
901 Lawrence Avenue West
Free Admission
What does Canada look like when approached not through headlines or statistics, but through direct encounters and lived experience?
This talk grows out of a 75-day, 21,000-kilometre journey from the Pacific to the Atlantic and back. Drawing on field notes, conversations, and a large body of visual documentation, Dr. Arianna Dagnino and Dr. Stefano Gulmanelli offer a grounded portrait of contemporary Canada, shaped by time spent listening to artists, farmers, Indigenous elders, activists, newcomers, community leaders and ordinary people in both urban centres and remote communities.
The presentation brings these encounters together within a broader interpretive framework, using images, narrative, and analysis to place individual stories in relation to questions of identity, belonging, and solidarity, and to reflect on how these are lived across Canada’s vast and diverse landscape.
Complementing the illustrated talk, a small photographic exhibition is presented, featuring 8 selected images captured by Dr. Stefano Gulmanelli during the coast-to-coast journey.
Arianna Dagnino is a writer, journalist, and researcher at the University of British Columbia. Holding a PhD in Comparative Literature, her career across five continents has cultivated a transnational perspective on identity, migration, and cultural transformation. Her work explores the human stories within global shifts.
With a background in Economics and a PhD in Sociology, Stefano Gulmanelli has worked as a corporate manager, journalist, photographer, and academic across the Middle East, Africa, Australia, and North America. His experience informs an interdisciplinary practice that combines research, writing, and photography, bringing these perspectives together in his storytelling.