His first book, Shrines of the Slave Trade: Diola Religion and Society in Pre-Colonial Senegambia won an American Academy of Religion award for the best first book in the history of religions (2000). He has written numerous articles on the history of Diola religion, religious constructions of gender, indigenous religions and is currently completing a book on the history of Diola women's prophetic movements. He received his B.A. from Wesleyan University, and upon graduation, he received a Watson Fellowship. He spent an entire year in a Diola village in southern Senegal, where he learned the language and began field research before beginning graduate school at Yale University. He returned to Senegal for two more years, and did archival work in London and Paris in preparation of his Ph.D.