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Mathew Ayodele is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at Stanford University, where he is also pursuing a PhD minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. His research investigates the long-term marginalization of indigenous healers in Nigeria and its implications for contemporary healthcare access and development. He examines how indigenous healers navigated colonial and postcolonial medical systems through adaptation, resistance, and innovation. Drawing on history, anthropology, botany, art history, and digital humanities, Ayodele’s work highlights the relevance of indigenous medical knowledge in addressing healthcare inequities and strengthening public health systems in West Africa. He recently designed and taught the course “Disease and the Making of West African Cities, 1860–2020” and currently serves as a resident scholar at Stanford’s Center for Textual and Spatial Analysis (CESTA).

His research has received support from several institutions, which allows him to do international fieldwork. In the summer of 2024, he traveled to Nigeria to conduct archival research at the National Archives of Nigeria, Ibadan (NAI), and the Forest Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN), where he collected herbarium records to explore Nigerian Indigenous healers’ contributions to Britain’s postwar pharmaceutical research in West Africa. Ayodele is currently preparing for another phase of fieldwork to gather additional data for his project.

See below for photos from his research at FRIN in August 2024.