2024: Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin
2024: Research Fellow, CAS-E, Alexander Friedrich University
2021: Research Associate, The Global South Megachurch Project
2018: Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Austin
2017: PhD from the University of Texas at Austin
2013: M.A., African and African Diaspora Studies
2010: M.A., University of Ibadan, Nigeria
2006: B.A., University of Ibadan, Nigeria
Abimbola A. Adelakun, Assistant Professor in the Department of African/African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, researches spirituality and performance in Africa. She obtained a PhD from the department of Theatre and Dance at the University of Texas at Austin, along with a doctoral portfolio and Master’s degree from African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her academic articles have been published with The Drama Review and Journal of World Christianity. She is the author of Performing Power in Nigeria: Politics, Identity, and Pentecostalism (Cambridge 2021) and Powerful Devices: The Politics and Praxis of Spiritual Warfare (Rutgers 2022). She writes a weekly column for PUNCH Newspapers, Nigeria’s most widely-read newspaper. Her research has been supported by the John Templeton Religion Trust, the AAUW, The American Academy of Religion, The Henry Luce Foundation, Frances and Sanger Mossiker Research in the Humanities, and the John Warfield Center. In 2024, she was promoted to Associate Professor and was also a research fellow in the Center for Alternative Spiritualities at the Alexander Friedrich University, Erlangen.
Adelakun, Abimbola A. Performing Power in Nigeria: Identity, Politics, and Pentecostalism (Cambridge University Press, 2021).
Adelakun, Abimbola A. Powerful Devices: Prayer and the Political Praxis of Spiritual Warfare (Rutgers University Press, 2022).
Adelakun, Abimbola Adunni. “Thank God for amazon.com!”: Spiritual Warfare, African Theology, and Prayer Merch,” Journal of World Christianity, Fall 2022.
Adelakun, Abimbola Adunni. “The Healing of Maseko: Live, A-live, and Theatre of the Spiritual,” The Drama Review Journal, Fall 2022.
Adelakun, Abimbola Adunni. (2019). “Black Lives Matter! Nigerian Lives Matter!: Language and Why Black Performance Matters.” Genealogy 3 (2). Global Black Movements Issue. 19; https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy3020019
