Bankole worked as a full time Journalist in Africa, first as a science journalist and later edited a major national newspaper and as a media adviser in politics. He studied Agricultural Biology and has been actively involved in teaching and research in the sciences. Bankole studied for an MBA in Nigeria and an MSc in Social and Public Communication at the Department for Psychological and Behavioural Science (PBS) at the LSE. This was followed by a PhD thesis titled: Vaccination resistance, religion and attitudes to science in Nigeria. 

Bankole is interested in science communication and the impact of other knowledge sources such as religion, politics, economy, culture and traditions on the uptake of scientific ideas. He has special interests in the relationship between science and religion, the social representations of health and illness, particularly in Africa (in comparison with the West), media representations of science, automated text analysis and cross-cultural studies.

Post PhD at the LSE, Bankole taught Health Communication and was co-director of the MSc Health, Community and Development Programme at PBS for an academic session and then worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bielefeld in Germany. He is now a researcher with the Centre for Research on Evaluation Science and Technology (CREST), Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He was engaged by the LSE as a Visiting Fellow to the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science.