May 2026 graduate earns invitations to Oxford and King’s College

May 2026 graduate earns invitations to Oxford and King's College

London-bound senior produces publishable research analyzing treatment of religion in the journal 'International Organization'.

By Janel Shoun-Smith | 615-966-7078 | 04/28/2026

Oreoluwa Sharon Omotola Ajiboye (BA '26), of South Africa, was quite intimidated by research when she first came to Lipscomb. Four years later, however, she finds herself not only having produced a research project worthy of publication, but also accepted to two universities with two of the top graduate international relations programs in the world: Oxford University and Kings College London.

When she entered Associate Professor Susan Haynes' Research Methods course as a junior, she was inspired by Haynes' promise to include the top two students in the class in a research project. She didn't have any problem meeting that standard.

Her collaboration with Haynes on "The Marginalization of Religion in International Relations: A Content Analysis of International Organization (2000-2024)," explored how mainstream international relations scholarship treats the subject of religion.

"This is original research, done well, and I have never had another student that could produce quality work that would even be possible for joint publication," said Haynes, who presented the work at an academic conference and is pursuing possible publication options.

"She's such a systematic thinker. Really just a very deep thinker," Haynes said of Ajiboye, a political science major who plans to study either global and area affairs at Oxford or big data in culture and society at King's College, perhaps on her way to law school.

"The Rights and Liberties class that I had with Sharon four years ago was a very special class in large part because of Sharon," Haynes continued, "because she was so curious and asked such great questions and it allowed other students to feel like they could ask questions too, so the whole class had this wonderfully inquisitive nature."

Ajiboye first heard of Lipscomb when researching Nashville colleges while her Hendersonville-based cousins were visiting her in South Africa. She wanted to study overseas, but knew she still wanted some family ties, and Nashville was just the right size for her, she said. Plus, Lipscomb had programs she was interested in and scholarship opportunities.

During her studies at Lipscomb, Ajiboye, an Honors Scholar, has participated in both the moot court and mock trial teams, the Honors College Council and the African Student Association. She was selected as a Presidential Ambassador, as senior class representative and for the Alpha Chi and Phi Sigma Alpha honor societies.

She is excited about continuing her international education overseas in London, she said.
"I'm excited for the prospect of potentially studying at Oxford as an institution because my parents have always stressed education in my life, so I've always viewed places like Oxford as the pinnacle of that," she said.

For her research with Haynes, Ajiboye conducted a content analysis of the topic of religion in the academic journal International Organization, one of the field's most important journals, and categorized how religion was framed in 110 articles mentioning religion and published between 2000 and 2024.

"Our research asked whether mainstream international relations scholarship treats religion seriously as something that helps explain global politics? Or does it mostly ignore it and then panic slightly when it can't ignore it anymore?" said Ajiboye in her Student Scholars Symposium presentation on the project. "My argument is that religion is not just neglected in international relations, but that it is treated unevenly."

Haynes also presented the work at the Christianity in International Relations Conference at Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and is working to find a publication avenue for the paper.

Ajiboye found that only 110 out of 579 articles in the academic journal referenced religion at all, and fewer than 10 of them made religion a primary factor. The largest number of articles fell into the neutral category, meaning that religion often appeared only incidentally, and the negative portrayals of religion far outnumbered the positive ones.

Religion was much more likely to be presented as a source of violence, instability, or threat than as a constructive political force, said Ajiboye.

"This question matters because religion is politically complex," she said. "If scholarship only pays attention to one side of the picture, it produces a distorted understanding of global politics… A field that only makes room for religion as a threat or a demographic footnote is not actually capturing that complexity, and that is why I argue that international relations doesn't need more conversations about religion. It needs better ones."