Prayer as Performance: Reflections on Researching and Writing on Religion and Society

Abimbola A. Adelakun earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Theatre and Dance at The University of Texas at Austin along with a doctoral portfolio from African and African Diaspora Studies. She holds two M.A.s, one from UT Austin's Department of African and African Diaspora Studies, and the other from University of Ibadan, Communication and Language Arts. She studies modern African culture as they are lived and performed through the disciplinary lenses of performance, gender, Africana and Yoruba studies. Her academic articles have been published in Journal of Women and Religion, and Jenda: A Journal of Culture and African Women Studies, as well as several book collections. She recently published a co-edited book collection titled Art, Creativity, and Politics in Africa and the Diaspora. Her ongoing book project is entitled Spiritual Frivolities: Performing Pentecostal Pleasures.

Abimbola is also the author of Under the Brown Rusted Roofs (Kraft Books) and she also writes a weekly column for PUNCH Newspapers. Her research has been supported by the John L. Warfield Center for African and African American Studies, Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University, AAUW (International) and the Frances and Sanger Mossiker Research in the Humanities. She is the 2018 recipient of the Wangari Maathai Award for Scholarship and Leadership Excellence.