Mathew Ayodele

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. Ayodele is also a resident scholar at the Stanford Center for Textual and Spatial Analysis. His research investigates the long-term marginalization of indigenous healers in Nigeria and its implications for contemporary healthcare access and development. Drawing on history, anthropology, botany, art history, and digital humanities, Ayodele explores how healers navigated colonial and postcolonial constraints on indigenous healing practices through strategies of adaptation, resistance, and innovation. His work highlights the enduring significance of indigenous healing knowledge in addressing health inequities and strengthening public health systems across West Africa. He has presented his work at national and international conferences. One of his recent projects received the Best Paper Prize at the 2024 WARA/Berkeley CAS West Coast Conference on West Africa.Ayodele has a strong interest in teaching and academic organizing. Ayodele designed and taught the course "Disease and the Making of West African Cities, 1860–2020" at the Department of History. He also served as the graduate student organizer for the Stanford Africa Research Workshop (ARW) for the 2024-2025 academic session. Ayodele recently organized a panel on "Health, Mobility, and Migration in Africa" at the 2025 Annual Lagos Studies Association Conference.  

Ayodele is currently conducting fieldwork, including archival research and oral histories, in Africa, Europe, and North America for his broader dissertation. He is conducting archival searches at the National Archives of Nigeria in Ibadan, the British National Archives, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art in the United States, among other institutions. Additionally, Ayodele is also conducting an ethnographic study of indigenous healers in southwestern Nigeria.