Irene Vicente López de Arenosa obtained a degree in French and Arabic’s Translation and interpretation and a Master’s degree in Arabic and Isamic Contemporary Studies, both at he University Autonomous of Madrid. Her interest in Arab culture and religious studies grew during her stay at the University of Montreal (Canada) and at the University of Nanterre (France), where she stayed for a year and she could meet people from different religious communities.
Her PhD-thesis will focus on the religious polemic between Fray Pedro de Alcántara and Talbe Abdalá Oropesa, in Marrakesh (S.XVII), conserved, as far as we know, in two differents manuscripts, and which fall within a historical context dominated by the processes of confessionalisation and the emergence of modern European orientalism. This was a time when there was a strong transfer of the European population to North Africa, with the consequent collective experience of captivity and conversion. This makes the North African dimension (that interest her more in her upcoming critical edition she is working) particularly relevant to the understanding of the process of European apprehension of Islam between polemic and scholarship.