Olúwábùnmi Bernard

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher on the Yorùbá Print Culture project supervised by Prof. Dr. Shola Adenekan and funded by the European Research Council at Ghent University, Belgium.

I was previously a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), the University of Amsterdam, for the 2023/2024 academic year. I also just completed my monograph titled “The Gods are Wise: Environmental Sustainability in Yorùbá sacred orature” which is currently being reviewed. I am a reviewer for journals, books, and fellowships and on the editorial board of the University of Amsterdam Press series on Liveable Futures. Yorùbá print culture has always fascinated me because it documents and preserves a robust history, oral literature, culture and traditions, ritual practices and performances, and the worldview of a densely oral culture like the Yorùbá. Most of my access to the past, history and development of the Yorùbá has been facilitated and influenced mostly by the print culture. Pamphlets, reports, stories, newspapers in Yorùbá, novels, anthologies of Yorùbá poetry and performative culture (oríkì, ẹsẹ-Ifá, ẹ̀sà egúngún, ẹkún ìyàwó, Ọya pípè, Ìjálá, Ọ̀ṣun pípè, and others) were important sources whenever I am researching into the areas of gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, environmental studies, identity politics, and African religions particularly, the Yorùbá Òrìṣà worship.

I hold a Ph.D. in Yorùbá Language and Literature from Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria where I have taught Yorùbá literature and culture in undergraduate and graduate studies programmes for ten years. My research interests include Yorùbá language, Yorùbá oral and written literature, gender and sexuality, postcolonial, and environmental studies. I have authored and co-authored papers in these areas. I have won many prestigious fellowships. Among them are the University of Michigan African Presidential Scholars Programme (UMAPS), A.G. Leventis Fellowship at SOAS University of London, the Leventis Fellowship at the Centre of African Studies, University of Cambridge, and the African Humanities Programme (AHP) postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).