[2][3] Olupona is a scholar of indigenous African religions who came to Harvard after serving as a professor at the University of California, Davis.
[1] In his forthcoming book Ile-Ife: The City of 201 Gods, he examines the modern urban mixing of ritual, royalty, gender, class, and power, and how the structure, content, and meaning of religious beliefs and practices permeate daily life.
As he grew older, the perception of multi-religious traditions of Islam, Christianity and indigenous religion opened spaces for the drive for his early scholarship on the ideology and rituals of Yoruba sacred kingship.
[12] During his service year in Ilorin, the host Governor of Kwara state, Colonel Ibrahim Taiwo was killed in a military coup as well as General Murtala Muhammed which filled the nation with unease in 1976.
The memorial church service held for the general and the preaching of an Anglican Priest in the event heightened his scholarly imagination.