Oludamini Ogunnaike is an associate professor of African religious thought and democracy in the department of religious studies at the University of Virginia. His research examines the intellectual and aesthetic dimensions of Islamic and indigenous traditions of West Africa, especially Sufism and Ifa. He is the author of Deep Knowledge: Ways of Knowing in Sufism and Ifa, Two West African Intellectual Traditions, published by Penn State University Press in 2020 and winner of the Outstanding First Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora; and of Poetry in Praise of Prophetic Perfection: West African Madīh Poetry and its Precedents, published by the Islamic Texts Society in 2020. Ogunnaike received his doctorate from Harvard University in African and African American studies and the study of religion.