Research
Research papers
15 papers, from her early neuroscience work in Munich to Goethe, Islamic education and Islamic psychology. Each has a short plain-English summary and a link to the paper.
4 papers
Islamic psychology
- 2025
A study of relationship between mental health, emotional intelligence and religiosity among Muslim students
Sana Rizwan Khan, Francesca Umm Yahya (Bocca-Aldaqre), Nissar Ahmad Yatoo · Journal of Integrated Sciences (International Open University)
The authors surveyed 382 Muslim university students from countries including Malaysia, Indonesia, Nigeria, The Gambia, Pakistan, India and the United States. Students who were more religious, and students with higher emotional intelligence, reported less psychological distress. Students at Islamic institutions and older students scored higher on both religiosity and emotional intelligence. The authors suggest that faith and emotional skills could be used to help students who are struggling.
- 2025
Grief reactions and coping strategies of Prophet Ya’qub in the light of the Noble Qur’an: a thematic analysis
Khadijah Maklai, Francesca Umm Yahya (Bocca-Aldaqre) · Journal of Integrated Sciences
This study reads the story of the Prophet Jacob (Yaʿqūb) in Sūrat Yūsuf to see how he coped with losing his sons. It finds three ways he grieved: “beautiful patience”, crying, and quiet sadness. It also finds three ways he coped: by managing his emotions, by turning to God, and by taking practical steps. The authors suggest these lessons can be used in grief counselling for Muslims.
- 2025
Editorial, Issue IV
Francesca Bocca · Journal of Integrated Sciences
As editor, she introduces an issue of the International Open University’s research journal. The issue looks at Muslim life during the Covid-19 pandemic, including a study of depression, anxiety and stress among expatriates in Saudi Arabia, and a paper on women’s empowerment from an Islamic point of view. She argues that Muslim communities can adapt to crises by looking for answers within their faith and by supporting one another.
- 2023
Psicologia islamica: definizione, dibattiti ed emergenza di un nuovo campo
Islamic psychology: definition, debates and the rise of a new field
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre · Occhialì (Sapienza University of Rome)
This article explains what “Islamic psychology” means and how the field has grown since the term first appeared in the 1970s. It sets out two big debates. The first is whether to start from Islamic sources and build up, or start from modern psychology and adapt it. The second is whether to call the field “Islamic psychology” or “Islam and psychology”. It is the first article on the subject written in Italian, and it ends with a look at current clinical, teaching and community projects in Italy.
2 papers
Islamic education
- 2025
Challenges and solutions to primary and secondary Islamic education in western Nigeria
Musa Ibrahim-Katsina, Francesca Umm Yahya (Bocca-Aldaqre), Mohammad Anwar Sahib · Journal of Integrated Sciences
This study looks at the problems facing Islamic primary and secondary schools in western Nigeria. It traces many of them to British colonial rule, missionary schooling and a lasting sense of inferiority toward Western education. It also points to a shortage of well-trained, committed Muslim teachers. It recommends that school owners invest in their teachers, for example with training workshops at least twice a year.
- 2019
How can education be Islamic? Al-Attas and al-Farūqī’s frameworks in contemporary debate
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre · Journal of Education and Human Development 8(4)
In recent decades Muslim scholars have built new theories, methods and school curricula for a truly Islamic education, but the wider academic world has paid them little attention. This article first sets out the classic problems in Islamic education. It then compares the two most influential approaches, by Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas and Ismail al-Faruqi, looking at both their ideas about knowledge and how they work in practice. It ends with their influence today.
3 papers
Goethe and Islam
- 2021
Comparing Goethe’s and Hegel’s views on Islam: a thematic approach
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre · Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni 87(1), 322–340
This article compares how two leading German thinkers of the same era, the poet Goethe and the philosopher Hegel, understood Islam. Instead of following each man’s life in order, it compares their views theme by theme. It appeared in Italy’s oldest journal for the history of religions. No abstract is publicly available, so this summary is based on the title and the journal listing.
- 2020
Islam, Prophet, Hegira: Islamic vocabulary in Goethe’s letters, diaries and autobiography
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre · Annali di Scienze Religiose (Brepols)
Goethe’s interest in Islam is best known from his poetry collection, the West-Eastern Divan. This article looks instead at his private writing: letters, diaries, conversations and his autobiography. It follows how he used three Islamic words, “Islam”, “Prophet” and “Hegira” (the Prophet’s migration to Medina), and shows that he gave each a personal meaning of his own. Together they give a consistent picture of his private relationship with Islam, separate from his general interest in Eastern culture.
- 2019
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: a life with Islām
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre · Intellectual Discourse 27(2), 507–530
Scholars have called Goethe a Christian, a theist, a Freemason and even a pagan, but his relationship with Islam is usually overlooked. This article follows that relationship across his whole life and divides it into four stages. It points out Islamic themes in his letters and works, including Faust, many of them noticed here for the first time. It ends by asking what Goethe can teach us about a European Islam today.
3 papers
Islamic thought, Sufism and art
- 2021
A ṭarīqa for the West: the Murabitun movement between Sufi eclecticism and financial activism
Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre · Studi Magrebini (Brill)
The Murabitun are a branch of the Shādhilī-Darqāwī Sufi order that calls itself “a ṭarīqa (Sufi path) for the West”. Based in South Africa, it has followers in Europe, South America and South-East Asia. This is the first full review of the movement’s founding texts. It shows how the group mixes modern economic and political ideas, such as its campaign against modern banking, with classic Islamic themes, and how new writers are carrying on the legacy of its founder, Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi. It also discusses what this means for preventing radicalisation.
- 2021
Review of Massimo Campanini, Maometto. La vita e il messaggio di Muhammad il profeta dell’Islam
Book review
Francesca Bocca · Studi Magrebini (Brill)
A short review of a biography of the Prophet Muhammad by Massimo Campanini, a leading Italian historian of Islamic thought and her co-author on the Manuale di Teologia Islamica. The book covers both the life of the Prophet and the message he brought. A review like this tells other scholars what a new book offers and how it fits into the field.
- 2020
Amor vacui: ripetizione e vuoto come caratteristiche distintive dell’arte islamica
Love of emptiness: repetition and the void as distinctive features of Islamic art
Francesca Bocca · Occhialì
Is there something that all Islamic art has in common? This article reviews the answers of two key thinkers, Titus Burckhardt and Seyyed Hossein Nasr, and traces their ideas back to the Qur’an. It then uses the idea of emptiness, “the void”, to look at Sufi art forms. It calls for a fuller “Qur’anic aesthetics” that covers everything from architecture and calligraphy to poetry and music.
3 papers
Neuroscience
- 2015
The right angular gyrus combines perceptual and response-related expectancies in visual search: TMS-EEG evidence
Francesca Bocca, Thomas Töllner, Hermann J. Müller, Paul C. J. Taylor · Brain Stimulation 8(4), 816–822
When we search for something, what we saw and did on the previous try affects how fast we find it the next time. This study used magnetic brain stimulation (TMS) together with brain recordings (EEG) to test the role of one area, the right angular gyrus. Stimulating it between tries made people faster, but only when both the kind of target and the needed response repeated. This suggests that the area combines what we expect to see with how we expect to respond. A short correction was published in 2016.
- 2015
Combined TMS-EEG: studies of visual attention
PhD thesis
Francesca Bocca · Graduate School of Systemic Neurosciences, LMU Munich
Her doctoral thesis in Munich, supervised by Paul Taylor. It combined magnetic brain stimulation with brain recordings to study how the brain directs visual attention, including the experiments behind the paper above. The full text is free to read from the university library.
- 2009
A model of perception of the central point of elastic force fields
Francesca Bocca, Gabriel Baud-Bovy · IEEE World Haptics Conference
This early study is about touch: how people find the centre of a spring-like force they push against. Near the centre the force is too weak to feel, so people have to work it out from what they feel further away. They tended to place the centre toward the weaker side, and their answers became less precise as the forces got stronger. The authors propose a model that explains these errors.