Upcoming Events

Book Ends Information Session (virtual) promotional image

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)

Tuesday, February 3, 2026 8:30am to 9:00am
Virtual

Book Ends supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist faculty members in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Read more about the program.

Interested applicants are invited to learn more about the program and application process at a virtual information session on Tuesday, February 3, at 8:30 a.m. Obermann Center Director Luis Martín-Estudillo...

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 8:30am to 4:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete tips and operational strategies that support planning and longer-term sustainability.

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

The Research Development Office is hosting an in person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective promotional image

Application Deadline: Spring 2026 Obermann Writing Collective

Friday, January 23, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This program offers accountability to artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of writing project (articles, essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, etc.) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.

In spring 2026, four writing groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St. Each group will meet once a week for 1.5 hours, beginning the week of...

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award promotional image

Nomination Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award

Monday, February 2, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

The new Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award recognizes individuals or teams whose trajectories have engaged diverse disciplines to produce insights that would be unattainable within a single academic silo. These scholars cultivate collaborative work, fostering dialogue across academic fields and institutional units. Their research or creative work engages with foundational questions that resonate across society. By recognizing interdisciplinary excellence, the Obermann Center for...

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Fall 2026)

Saturday, February 14, 2026 (all day)
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Fall 2026 Obermann International Fellowships. This program offers dedicated space, time, and funding for interdisciplinary scholars to collaborate on innovative research at the University of Iowa. Up to eight international fellowships will be granted every academic year. Applicants must be active researchers at an accredited institution of higher learning outside of the United States or independent researchers/artists with...

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Spring Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Tuesday, February 17, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends—Obermann Book Completion Workshop supports University of Iowa faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award is designed to assist faculty members in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This new Obermann Center program offers modest yet swift support for those portions of research and creative endeavors by UI scholars that are important toward advancing a project but do not have enough funding from other sources. We will grant ten awards of $500 or less per academic year. Note that funds need to be spent by June 30 of each year.

Eligibility: Open to all University of Iowa faculty and staff researchers

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

News

Bern-Klug wearing American Association of Social Work and Social Welfare medal

Rethinking Aging with Mercedes Bern-Klug

Jenna Hammerich
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
How often do you spend time with people significantly older than you? Not very often, if you’re like most Americans. “We live in an age-segregated society,” notes Mercedes Bern-Klug, professor, mentor, researcher, and practitioner at the UI School of Social Work. “Young people hang out with young people. Teenagers hang out with teenagers. There are few opportunities for the generations to mix, outside of places of worship.” Plus, she says, contemporary American society tends to view life after 30 as, well…boring. As a result, many young people miss out on intergenerational interaction and its many benefits: reduced loneliness, improved mental and physical health—and, particular to adolescents, identity formation, skill development, and academic improvement. They also tend to miss out on career opportunities working with the ever-growing senior demographic. (Americans 65 and older are projected to make up 23% of the U.S. population within the next 30 years.) “Almost every health field is struggling to recruit enough students who want to work with older adults,” says Bern-Klug. To partly address this problem, the School of Social Work has created two general education courses aimed at freshmen—“Aging Matters: Intro to Gerontology” and “Mental Health Across the Lifespan”—with the hope of reaching more students.
Writers outdoors at retreat

A Wonderful Place to Write

Francesca Hendricks
The week after classes finished in the spring, I had the opportunity to participate in the Obermann Center’s End-of-Year Writing Retreat. The retreat offered faculty, staff, and students dedicated time to work on writing projects, which I hoped to spend editing my novel, a climate dystopia that centers on youth empowerment and the feeling of hopelessness that many of us experience as the climate changes despite our many efforts. Upon receiving an email of acceptance to the retreat, I was in class and could barely keep from grinning. However, underneath all that excitement, I felt a flicker of impostor syndrome. I didn’t know anyone in the retreat, and to make it more daunting, I was the only undergraduate student. So, even as I texted my friends and parents, overjoyed that I had been accepted, I was worried that I would be completely out of place.
Rasheedah Liman

Rasheedah Liman: Bridging Continents Through Eco-Theatre

This spring, we welcomed—and recently bid a regretful farewell to—Rasheedah Liman, director, playwright, and Professor of Theatre and Performing Arts at Ahmadu Bello University in Nigeria. Radiating enthusiasm from the moment she arrived, Rasheedah immersed herself in the UI theatre community and in discussions with faculty across the university. Liman is a scholar and practitioner of eco-theatre, a theatrical form that, in her words, "recognizes the potential of theatre to contribute to environmental consciousness, with the goal of harnessing the transformative power of the stage to engage audiences, evoke emotional responses, and promote environmental awareness."
Gabriela Roman Fuentes

Narrating Pain, Shaping Poetics: Gabriela Román Fuentes Drafts Novel and Play during Obermann Fellowship

Eleanor Ball
This spring, we welcomed Obermann International Fellow Gabriela Román Fuentes, an award-winning Mexican author, to campus. Her research centers on the representation of illness and female bodies in contemporary Latin American literature. “I am interested in the way diseases are depicted and how authors address pain and intimacy in their writing, as well as how bodies and illnesses have shaped their work,” Fuentes explains. “I regard illness and female bodies not only as mere topics, but also as a structural device and/or a maker of their Poetics.” This research is the foundation for two of Fuentes’s new creative projects, a novel about a woman suffering from an autoimmune disease and a play about hysteria.
abstract human face with ear emphasized

Learn about Listening at Obermann’s May 8 Research Blitz

Eleanor Ball
This year’s Wide Lens event, Obermann’s annual celebration of research on campus, will center the theme of listening. The May 8 event at the Voxman Music Building will bring together researchers from science, social sciences, the humanities, and the arts to investigate what it means to listen deeply and thoughtfully. “Listening attentively is crucial to much of what we do as scholars, researchers, and practitioners,” says Luis Martin-Estudillo, Director of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. “It requires will and skill, and the six colleagues presenting on their work are fantastic at both, each one from a very different disciplinary platform.”
Eleanor Ball at UI Main Library

Eleanor Ball Lands Faculty Position at UNI!

Congratulations to Obermann Communications Assistant Eleanor Ball, who has secured two extraordinary library positions for the coming year! In May, Eleanor will graduate from the UI with a Master of Library & Information Science degree and will begin remote work as a Junior Fellow with the Library of Congress Center for Learning, Literacy, and Engagement. As part of the Center’s Literary Initiatives team, which develops literary programming and administers literary ambassadorships, Eleanor will help to increase the visibility and accessibility of programs like the National Book Festival, promote awareness of the Library’s resources and services, and share with the public a diverse range of established and new literary voices. Then, in August, she’ll begin a three-year term with the University of Northern Iowa as Assistant Professor of Instruction & Information Literacy and Liaison Librarian, where she’ll liaise with the library and academic departments across campus, as well as teach information literacy classes.
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Recent Events

Out in the Field: Finding Wonder under the Water, in the Ground, and on the Waves — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Out in the Field: Finding Wonder under the Water, in the Ground, and on the Waves — An Obermann Conversation

Monday, November 16, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Join us for another virtual Obermann Conversation!

Three researchers whose work takes them into the field reflect on the experience of being far removed from screens, phones, and what many of us associate with everyday work. George Peterson, the Director of Dive Programs at the Monterey Bay Sea Aquarium, shares his love of scuba and the discoveries he makes under the world's oceans as a way to provoke wonder in others and spur them toward conservation. Cynthia Chou, UI professor of Anthropology...

Abortion Care in America promotional image

Abortion Care in America

Thursday, November 12, 2020 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Virtual

What: Abortion Care in America
When: Thursday, November 12th, 4:30 pm Central  
Where: Webinar registration link: https://uiowa.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_WKYdydtJQ-GzkzUhFgYb-g

About the talk: Professor Carole Joffe, sociologist and professor in the Ansirh  (Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health) program at UCSF and emerita from the University of California, Davis will join Lina-Maria Murillo, Assistant Professor of Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies and History at UI, and...

Get It Done: Working with Hancher in Spring 2021 promotional image

Get It Done: Working with Hancher in Spring 2021

Monday, November 9, 2020 12:30pm
Virtual

If you've ever passed by Hancher and felt a pang of desire to be part of a performance, you're not alone! We have asked our friends at this premier performing arts center to share their spring 2021 programming and to explain how you can continue to connect with arts programming at Hancher virtually—especially for teaching purposes. 

On Monday, November 9, from 12:30-1:30 p.m., Hancher's programming and education staff—Paul Brohan, Micah Ariel James, and Chuy Renteria—will give a snapshot of...

Little Resurrections: Laboring to Find Wonder in Our Work — An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Little Resurrections: Laboring to Find Wonder in Our Work — An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, October 28, 2020 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Join a minister, a dancer, and a religious anthropologist for a conversation about social justice, the body's awe-inspiring movement, and the tension between the mundane and profound qualities of 21st-century labor.  

The past few months have shone an intense light on the demands of different forms of work. Americans are picking lettuce in the midst of nearby forest fires, chasing kindergartners while on Zoom work calls, and caring for COVID patients. Workers deemed "essential" are treated as...

Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice promotional image

Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice

Wednesday, October 14 to Saturday, October 31, 2020 (all day)
Virtual

Starting on October 4th and continuing through the month, Iowa Arts is sponsoring a series of events that bring arts and humanities together to explore a range of timely issues. The initiative, called “Art and the Pursuit of Social Justice,” includes music and theatre productions framed by discussions to place them in a social context. It also features conversations with distinguished faculty and guests about how the arts and humanities can inform medical practice and bring attention to complex...

Obermann Around the Table: Listening to the Past, Sharing Thoughts on the Present, Imagining a More Just Future promotional image

Obermann Around the Table: Listening to the Past, Sharing Thoughts on the Present, Imagining a More Just Future

Sunday, October 11, 2020 4:00pm
Virtual

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is launching a new series entitled Obermann Around the Table--in honor of much missed in person conversations in our library. Our hope is that the series will provide a welcoming, nonjudgmental space in which colleagues, neighbors, and new friends can address difficult subjects that impact our communities and reflect on ways to move toward more just and generous communities.

In the first event of the series, we will reflect on the theme Finding Your...