Harvard University

Graduate Student, African and African American Studies

About

Funlayo E. Wood is a second year Harvard doctoral student in African and African American Studies with a primary field in Religion. Her research focuses on philosophical and theological aspects of Ifá-Òrìsà tradition as practiced in Nigeria and in the Americas, and cross-cultural analysis of Yoruba religious concepts and practice – within all of which she privileges Yoruba language as a conduit to understanding.

Funlayo holds a Bachelor of Arts in the African Diaspora in the Americas from the CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique & Interdisciplinary Studies and a Master of Arts in History from the City College of New York where she was a graduate fellow at the Colin Powell Center for Leadership and Service. Throughout her post-secondary career, she has engaged in research on African Indigenous religious systems including research at the University of Legon in Ghana, Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria and at various cultural-historical sites in Nigeria and Egypt.

Funlayo is currently a Junior Fellow at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School where she is engaged in producing programming for the university and the public around African, African Diasporic and American Indigenous religions. She also she serves on the boards of the Orisa Community Development Corporation and Creating a Culture of Peace, non-profit organizations dedicated to community building. She is additionally affiliated with the Harvard Committee on African Studies, the American Academy of Religion, the National Council for Black Studies and the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora.

Complementing her academic life, Funlayo is an Òrìsà priestess,  writer, public speaker and creator of the positive-thinking webspace www.AseIre.com. Since her initiations in 2008, she has been in intensive training with her spiritual guru Awo Chief Oluwole Ifakunle Adetutu Chief Priest of Ile Omo Ope Shrine in her native New York City.

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