Upcoming Events

AI Is Not Your Friend: Cautions and Vents about Its Uses and Abuses in the Creation of Scholarly Publications — public lecture by Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

AI Is Not Your Friend: Cautions and Vents about Its Uses and Abuses in the Creation of Scholarly Publications — public lecture by Walter Biggins, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Tuesday, October 6, 2026 3:00pm to 4:00pm
111 Church Street

On Tuesday, Oct. 6, from 3–4 p.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, Walter Biggins, editor-in-chief at University of Pennsylvania Press—will offer his perspective as both a longtime acquiring editor and as a writer on how the advent of AI affects the present and possible futures of scholarly publishing. In particular, he will discuss how the emerging technology creates concerns and unresolved tensions—ethical, legal, and otherwise—in publishing around intellectual property, peer...

Holding Space: Stories of Interdisciplinary Collaboration — Counterpoint event featuring Stephanie Miracle promotional image

Holding Space: Stories of Interdisciplinary Collaboration — Counterpoint event featuring Stephanie Miracle

Tuesday, October 13, 2026 5:00pm to 5:15pm
Voxman Music Building

Join us to celebrate the interdisciplinary work of University of Iowa choreographer and assistant professor of dance Stephanie Miracle, recipient of the 2026 Obermann Interdisciplinary Achievement Award.

Miracle will bring together dance, engineering, and the humanities in a new choreographed work featuring dancers performing alongside robots built by the University of Iowa College of Engineering, with narration by Eric Gidal.

A conversation among Miracle, Gidal, and engineering collaborator Deema...

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, January 13, 2027 1:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

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 Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

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

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

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 Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027)

Friday, September 18, 2026 11:59pm
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2027 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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books 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 UI faculty members of all ranks and with significant research responsibilities to turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour virtual workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Thursday, April 1, 2027 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 10 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 who have not received a SIP award in the past academic year.

Application...

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30)

Wednesday, April 7, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups led by faculty that may include advanced graduate students, staff members, and community members with a shared intellectual interest.

Groups have used this opportunity to share their work in progress or draw up a set of readings they want to undertake and discuss. Others have organized conferences, applied for grants together, written articles together, designed new courses, taken field trips, organized...

News

Brain Time: Rodica Curtu, Mathematical Biology, and the Perception of Time

For Rodica Curtu, math is a balm. In high school, when she’d get a headache, she’d sit down and solve math problems—“The opposite of what my friends would do!” she laughs. Now, as a professor in the Department of Mathematics (CLAS) and a member of the Iowa Neuroscience Institute, she uses mathematical analysis to help find treatments for people with debilitating brain disorders—specifically...
Eric Hirsch with two Peruvians, standing outdoors

Rural life, capitalism, and solidarity: Eric Hirsch on the challenges of climate change & entrepreneurship in highland Peru

Climate change is nothing short of a disaster for farmers in the Peruvian Andes. As one put it in a 2017 interview, “If the glaciers disappear, we’ll have to die.” With droughts becoming more frequent, Andean farmers are struggling to irrigate their crops and water their livestock; unpredictable weather has changed once-reliable patterns of plant growth; and occasionally, a “glacial lake outburst”...
participants in 1950s racial justice institute

Planning the UI College of Education Annual Summer Racial Justice Institute

In 1944, sociologist Charles S. Johnson launched the Fisk University Race Relations Institute (RRI), which ran until 1969. His goal was to identify the social, political, and economic policies and practices that limited opportunities for Blacks and other marginalized racial groups and contributed to racial unrest in the U.S. The RRI differed from the other estimated 400 organizations working to...

Heart Attack or Takotsubo Syndrome? An AI project seeks to differentiate

Chest pain, shortness of breath, and an irregular EKG are hallmarks of a heart attack. However, some people exhibiting these symptoms may actually be experiencing takotsubo syndrome (TTS), a weakening of the left ventricle. The majority of cases of TTS, which is more prevalent in women, are caused by acute stress, such as unexpected loss, serious illness, intense fear, or a violent interaction...
The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa, 2021-22

The Anne Frank Tree: Taking Root in Iowa

On April 29, 2022, the University of Iowa will welcome a remarkable new tree to the Pentacrest: a sapling propagated from the old chestnut tree that grew behind the Amsterdam annex where Anne Frank and her family hid during World War II. Although the tree died a number of years ago--at an estimated 170 years old--it lives on through saplings that have been planted in such as places as the Boston...
Tracie Morris

Black Spring: Tracie Morris asks, "How did we get to here and where do we go from here?"

As the culminating event in the Black Lives on Screen series that has spanned the spring semester, Tracie Morris (Iowa Writers' Workshop) is presenting a short filmic work with performance voice-over. Black Spring (in 5 parts) is cultural theory, cinema, poetry, protest art, and elegy. Like much of Morris's work, it is a hybrid that is not easily categorized. Resisting categories Morris is a poet...

Thinking in Images: The Evolution of Rachel Williams

“I had to think in images.” This is how Rachel Williams explains her progression as the artist-author of two graphic histories who moved from illustrating the words of others to bringing a story to life on her own terms. A painter and art educator by training, Williams’s approach has always been multi-disciplinary. For her recently published books, Run Home If You Don’t Want to Be Killed: The...

Cathy Park Hong Gives UI Keynote

In the first chapter of Cathy Park Hong’s creative nonfiction book Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (One World, 2020), the reader is transported to Kalamazoo, where Hong gave a reading from an early draft of her book at Western Michigan University. At the end of the event some fans approach her, eager to share gratitude for her work and express how personal it is to them. Two audience...
Imagining Latinidades podcast logo

Sawyer Seminar Culminates with Latina/o/x Futurity

When COVID-19 interrupted the late spring events and culmination of the yearlong Mellon Sawyer Seminar Imagining Latinidades: Articulations of National Belonging, we didn't know that the events would eventually end up online and across institutions. In 2019–20, seminar co-directors Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, Ariana Ruiz, and Rene Rocha worked across disciplines to organize six symposia, a film series...

Signing Music, Gender in The Iliad, and Civil Rights Performance: Three faculty receive book completion awards

Three UI faculty have received Book Ends awards to complete manuscripts. A jointly sponsored opportunity of the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends supports faculty from disciplines in which publishing a monograph is required for tenure and promotion. The award, which is now in its third year, is designed to help faculty members...

Recent Events

Young Writers Respond promotional image

Young Writers Respond

Friday, April 29, 2022 7:30pm to 8:30pm
Phillips Hall

This year, the Iowa Youth Writing Project, IC Speaks, and the UI Center for Human Rights have asked students to respond to the legacy of Anne Frank via various prompts—reflecting on Anne's experience as a hidden person and her message about social justice. In this event, writers from junior high age through undergraduates will share their entries. We'll hear from local voices, as well as from young people around the world who participated in these calls.

This event follows the Anne Frank Tree...

Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony promotional image

Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony

Friday, April 29, 2022 5:00pm
Macbride Hall

On April 29, 2022, a new tree will be planted on the University of Iowa’s Pentacrest—a sapling propagated from the immense horse chestnut tree that grew in the courtyard behind the annex where Anne Frank and her family hid for 761 days during World War II. This living symbol of Anne’s spirit and humanitarian message is the 13th Anne Frank Sapling to be planted in the United States.

This event is free and open to the public.

NOTICE: Because of weather, the 4/29 tree planting ceremony has been...

Amal Kassir Writing Workshop: Using Writing as a Tool for Healing promotional image

Amal Kassir Writing Workshop: Using Writing as a Tool for Healing

Friday, April 29, 2022 1:00pm to 2:30pm
North Hall

FREE – SPACE LIMITED TO 12 STUDENTS

SIGN UP: https://bit.ly/AmalWorkshop

Poet Amal Kassir will be taking part in the Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony on the UI Pentacrest at 5:00 pm on April 29. Prior to the ceremony, she has offered to lead a writing workshop for students in the School of Social Work.

Join Amal in a brave space, where we will be exploring our own stories for healing that may go beyond us, from within and back! Amal believes we have the capacity to control our narrative...

A Conversation with Amal Kassir: Celebrating Poetree promotional image

A Conversation with Amal Kassir: Celebrating Poetree

Thursday, April 28, 2022 9:30am to 10:30am
Phillips Hall
What Do We Mean by Research Now? Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now? Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges

Friday, April 22, 2022 11:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

What Do We Mean by Research Now? Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges

The very acronym STEM assumes that when scientists try to solve complex problems, they work in teams. Only recently, however, have those teams stretched to include artists, humanities scholars, and social scientists. These expansive teams often work with facilitators grounded in the psychology of relationship-building and the recognition that the success of technical solutions is deeply entangled with...

Behind the Big House—Preserving and Interpreting the Material History of Slavery in the U.S. promotional image

Behind the Big House—Preserving and Interpreting the Material History of Slavery in the U.S.

Thursday, April 21, 2022 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives of enslaved people. Jodi Skipper’s new book, Behind the Big House, candidly documents her eight-year collaboration with the Behind the Big House program, a community-based model used at local historic sites to address slavery in the collective narrative of U.S. history and culture. As an academic, Skipper also seeks to help other activist scholars...