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...

View more events

Spacer

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.
View more articles
Subscribe to newsletter

Recent Events

Obermann Humanities 3MT Competition promotional image

Obermann Humanities 3MT Competition

Friday, September 27, 2019 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library

On Friday, September 27, from 4:00–5:30 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library (Room A), the Obermann Center will host a Humanities Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, especially designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The 3MT competition challenges graduate students to articulate their complex research clearly and concisely to non-specialist audiences; the goal of presenters is to present their research in three minutes or fewer. The winner of the Obermann Humanities...

How to Write Effective Letters of Recommendation: A Lunchtime Workshop promotional image

How to Write Effective Letters of Recommendation: A Lunchtime Workshop

Thursday, September 26, 2019 12:00pm to 1:00pm
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

In this informal workshop, Obermann Center Director Teresa Mangum will share tips and advice on writing recommendation letters. Come with questions—and bring your own lunch!

This is an informal, lunchtime workshop that is part of the GET IT DONE! series. Everyone is welcome; no registration is necessary.

Imagining Latinidades in Global and National Perspective (Sawyer Seminar Opening Conference)

Saturday, September 21, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this opening conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help frame the larger scope of a yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” Speakers include the following:

Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University. Her research spans urban ethnography, the political economy of culture and media, consumption, immigration, and geographies of inequality and race.

Valerie Martinez-Ebers is...

3MT Workshop: Finding Your Authentic Speaking Voice promotional image

3MT Workshop: Finding Your Authentic Speaking Voice

Friday, September 20, 2019 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies

To help graduate students prepare for a 3MT presentation, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is partnering with UI Theatre lecturer and local actor Kristy Hartsgrove-Mooers to lead an hour-and-a-half workshop. Kristy will help participants learn how to use voice, posture, and breath to create a relaxed and confident speaking experience. Kristy regularly teaches “Speaking for Success” and has appeared locally at Riverside Theatre and the Iowa Summer Repertory.

This workshop is intended for...

NEH Regional Application Writing Workshop promotional image

NEH Regional Application Writing Workshop

Friday, September 20, 2019 8:30am to 12:30pm

The University of Iowa will host a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Regional Application Writing Workshop on September 20, 2019, 8:30am-12:30pm.

The workshop will include a presentation about NEH grant programs, a discussion of grant-writing tips, and a demonstration of NEH's peer review system.

This workshop is free and open to scholars from any institution.

Imagining Latinidades in Global and National Perspective (Sawyer Seminar Opening Conference)

Friday, September 20 to Saturday, September 21, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

In this opening conference for the Mellon Foundation-funded Sawyer Seminar, six invited scholars of Latina/o/x studies help frame the larger scope of a yearlong conversation about “Imagining Latinidades.” Speakers include the following:

Arlene Dávila is Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at New York University. Her research spans urban ethnography, the political economy of culture and media, consumption, immigration, and geographies of inequality and race.

Valerie Martinez-Ebers is...