Upcoming Events & Deadlines

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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Thursday, May 31, 2029 (all day)
111 Church Street

Books 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 turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.

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News

Dominic Dongilli at his internship

Summer Interns at the Halfway Mark: A growing tomato, a gift from Brokaw, and nudity in the archives

Jennifer New
It is around the halfway point of so many projects when the work is most difficult. The newness has worn off; the end is still out of reach, but close enough to give us an uneasy reminder of how much is yet to be completed. This is the experience of the ten UI graduate students who are at the midway point of their Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internships. For eight weeks, they are working...
Teachers and children in classroom

A Thousand Prospects for Research: A Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar Reflects

In late summer 2020, a new community initiative was formed in response to the impact of the pandemic on K12 students: Neighborhood NESTS. The Obermann Center responded by creating a new graduate research position, the Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar, to work with the initiative, providing program management and deepening the project through disciplinary research. In this article...

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

Jenna Hammerich
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

Jenna Hammerich
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

Jennifer New
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?"

Jennifer New
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

Jennifer New
“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...
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Recent Events

From Silent Spring to Silent Night: A Tale of Toads and Men. A public talk by Tyrone B. Hayes promotional image

From Silent Spring to Silent Night: A Tale of Toads and Men. A public talk by Tyrone B. Hayes

Saturday, April 5, 2025 11:30am
Phillips Hall

Tyrone Hayes is the Judy Chandler Webb Distinguished Chair for Innovative Teaching and Research and a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the role of steroid hormones in amphibian development and he conducts both laboratory and field studies in the U.S. and Africa. The two main areas of interest are metamorphosis and sex differentiation, but he is also interested in growth (larval and adult) and hormonal regulation of aggressive behavior...

Science, the State, and the Public Trust: Historical Perspectives. A Panel Discussion promotional image

Science, the State, and the Public Trust: Historical Perspectives. A Panel Discussion

Saturday, April 5, 2025 10:45am
Phillips Hall

A discussion of historical perspectives on science, the state, and the public trust with Department of History faculty Viridiana Hernández Fernández, Shane Bobrycki, Robert Rouphail, Nicholas Yablon, and Beth Yale

This event is part of Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest, a celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity, which takes place on April 3, 4 & 5. The 2025 speakers are Tyrone Hayes (UC Berkeley), Chris Jones (Iowa Driftless Water Defenders), and David Cwiertny (Civil...

A Healthy Iowa Needs Clean Water: A public talk by David Cwiertny promotional image

A Healthy Iowa Needs Clean Water: A public talk by David Cwiertny

Saturday, April 5, 2025 10:00am
Phillips Hall

David Cwiertny is the William D. Ashton Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Environmental Policy Research Program at the University of Iowa. His research specializes in the development of nanomaterials based approaches for resource sustainability and the environmental occurrence, fate and effects of emerging pollutant classes. At the UI, he directs the state-funded Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination, which conducts research to identify, measure, and prevent...

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference promotional image

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference

Friday, April 4, 2025 9:00pm to 6:00pm
Schaeffer Hall
Bring the Noise: Estrogen Sensitivity in Frogs. Tyrone B. Hayes promotional image

Bring the Noise: Estrogen Sensitivity in Frogs. Tyrone B. Hayes

Friday, April 4, 2025 4:30pm
Biology Building East

Tyrone Hayes is the Judy Chandler Webb Distinguished Chair for Innovative Teaching and Research and a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the role of steroid hormones in amphibian development and he conducts both laboratory and field studies in the U.S. and Africa. The two main areas of interest are metamorphosis and sex differentiation, but he is also interested in growth (larval and adult) and hormonal regulation of aggressive behavior...

Iowa: Land of Troubled Water, a talk by Chris Jones promotional image

Iowa: Land of Troubled Water, a talk by Chris Jones

Friday, April 4, 2025 3:30pm
Biology Building East

Chris Jones is author of The Swine Republic which was named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress. The book explores Iowa's infamously poor water quality through an analysis of research and reportage. Until recently, Jones was a research engineer with IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering at the University of Iowa. He holds a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Montana State University and a BA in chemistry and biology from Simpson College. Previous career stops include...