About
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre
Born in Piacenza, Italy, on 14 September 1987. Embraced Islam in Damascus in 2009. Trained as a cognitive neuroscientist in Munich and in the Islamic sciences in Damascus and Bosnia.
Dr. Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre works where neuroscience, Islamic theology and pastoral care meet. She studied psychological sciences in Milan, then earned a Master of Science in Neuro-Cognitive Psychology and a PhD in Systemic Neurosciences at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich. She later completed the Diploma in Islamic Psychology at Cambridge Muslim College and a Diploma in Islamic Theology and Philosophy from Cambridge Islamic College. She now teaches on the Blogging Theology Academy’s Diploma in Islamic Psychology.
Alongside her academic training she holds several diplomas in Islamic studies and theology, and ijāzāt (traditional teaching authorisations) from teachers in Damascus and Bosnia.
“My formation crosses the laboratory and the madrasa. What I found is that the classical Islamic tradition does not need Western psychology to be complete. It needs to be remembered.”
Teaching and institutions
She co-founded the Istituto Islamico di Studi Avanzati, where she is a professor, and founded Shams, Psicologia Islamica, her Islamic psychology practice in Italy. She is content director of the International Association for Islamic Psychology (IAIP).
From 2016 to 2025 she directed the Averroè Institute of Islamic Studies in Piacenza. She has also been professor of Islamic culture at the Italian Institute of Islamic Studies (2017–2021), professor of Arabic culture at Società Umanitaria in Milan (2019–2022), lecturer in Islamic theology and researcher in philosophy at Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele (2019–2020), and head of the psychology department at the International Open University in The Gambia (2021–2022). Before that she was a researcher and lecturer at LMU Munich (2011–2015).
Writing and research
She has written more than twelve books, from Islamic theology and pedagogy to essays on Western thought and Islam, and poetry, and has published over thirty peer-reviewed papers. From 2019 to 2021 she sat on the board of directors of Fondazione Leonardo’s Civiltà delle Macchine in Rome.
Islamic psychology
Her channel Islamic Psychology with Dr. Francesca aims to revive ʿilm al-nafs for today: going past symptom management to the spiritual roots of anxiety, distorted thinking and the “diseases of the heart”, through tazkiyat al-nafs (purification of the soul). She also teaches on the Blogging Theology Academy Diploma in Islamic Psychology, launched in January 2026.
Clinical work
She works as a counsellor in Islamic psychology with clients around the world.
Neuroscience research
Her doctoral research at LMU Munich used combined TMS-EEG to study visual attention, including the role of the right angular gyrus in visual search (Brain Stimulation, 2015).