Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre

Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre (Piacenza, 14 September 1987) is an Italian theologian, professor of Islamic Civilization at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University and of Arab Culture at the Humanitarian Society. She is the Dean of Faculty in the Department of Psychology at the International Open University.

She is the director of the Averroè Institute of Islamic Studies in Piacenza and is co-founder and Professor at the Islamic Institute of Advanced Studies.

She has written on neuroscience and theology for Civiltà delle Macchine.

Biography

After studying at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, she moved to Munich, Germany, where she obtained a master's degree and a PhD in Systemic Neuroscience at the Ludwig-Maximilians Universität. In parallel, she perfected her linguistic and theological studies in Syria, the United States and England.

In 2016 she was summoned by the Averroes Institute of Islamic Studies to take over its direction. [The Institute becomes the first Islamic reality in Italy to teach religion using texts in Italian, of which it itself is the curator] and to incorporate civic education in the subjects of study. She published the theoretical basis of this educational project in an essay in italian, A Qur'an that walks. Fundamentals of Islamic educational, didactic and pedagogical thought.

Since 2017 she is Professor of Theology at the Italian Institute of Islamic Studies.

She is responsible for the curatorship of the exhibition Tafakkur: man, nature and infinity, Archived 27 January 2020 at the Wayback Machine, at the Natural History Museum of Piacenza, in which the theme of biodiversity is addressed with a theological approach.

Since 2018 she has been a member of the board of directors of Civiltà delle Macchine, where she publishes contributions on theological and neuroscientific nature.

She appeared in the documentary Veli di Cristallo Archived 11 August 2020, which she co-presented at the 2018 edition of the Genoa Science Festival.

In 2019 she co-authored with Pietrangelo Buttafuoco the essay Sotto il suo passo nasce i fiori. Goethe and Islam. With Buttafuoco she shares the project of establishing literary, poetic and philosophical links between Islamic and European culture.

Since 2019 she is professor of Arabic Language and Culture at the Humanitarian Society of Milan.

In 2020 she is involved in the creation of an area for the burial of the faithful of Muslim religion inside the cemetery of Piacenza, inaugurated by the Municipality of Piacenza on the occasion of the loss of her husband, Iyad Aldaqre, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Since 2021 she is professor of Islamic Civilization at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University in Milan. She is the author of the book Nietzsche in Paradise. Parallel lives between Islam and the West, and the Manual of Islamic Theology, written with Massimo Campanini but published posthumously.

She assumes the position of Dean of the Faculty of Islamic Psychology at the International Open University, a distance university institution based in The Gambia.

He wrote for the theater the libretto of the chamber opera Le Ore delle Spose, a new production of the Fondazione Teatro Coccia of Novara. The work is inspired by the story of Bluebeard in Bela Bartok's version, and tells of the transformation of his last bride who manages to free herself from Bluebeard's violent love. The verses of Francesca Bocca-Aldaqre are accompanied on stage by music composed by Maestro Claudio Scannavini, directed by Deda Cristina Colonna.

Since 2022 she has directed the Islamic Institute of Advanced Studies, of which she is co-founder.