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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 with significant research responsibilities turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

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

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: 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

Announcing "1984 in 2017: A Symposium"

This April, Loren Glass (English, CLAS; Center for the Book) and the UI Center for Human Rights will present an interdisciplinary public symposium, 1984 in 2017. The all-day event will explore correlations between George Orwell's dystopian—and newly bestselling—novel 1984 and current events, addressing such questions as, What does it mean to live in a world where dystopian fiction resembles...

Civic Media: When Coding, Social Justice, and Creativity Meet

Lecture and workshop from Catherine D’Ignazio What happens when coding, creativity, and commitment to social justice come together? One answer is Catherine D’Ignazio. A researcher, designer, and software developer, D’Ignazio is Assistant Professor of Civic Media and Data Visualization in the Journalism Department at Emerson College. She is also a Principal Investigator at the Emerson Engagement...

Digital Storytelling at Heart of Spring Digital Bridges Lineup

Digital Bridges for Humanistic Inquiry: A Grinnell College/University of Iowa Partnership is at a midway point. Generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the grant offers faculty members, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students at Grinnell College and The University of Iowa opportunities to experiment with collaborative practices in the humanities from 2015 through 2018. Virtual...

Successfully Aging in Place: Obermann Conversation focuses on keeping older residents in neighborhoods

Many of us hope to age in our own homes, but looking ahead, we wonder about everyday practicalities. What happens when we can no longer rake our leaves or change a light bulb in a hard-to-reach spot? The next Obermann Conversation features UI Aging Studies program director Mercedes Bern-Klug, communications consultant Susan Shullaw, and Tippie College of Business emeritus faculty member Nancy...

Student Loan Debt Topic of February Visit

On Monday, February 13, at 7:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Professor of Higher Education Policy & Sociology at Temple University, will give a public lecture on the crisis of college affordability and student loan debt. She will offer solutions for fixing the U.S. financial aid system to make higher education accessible to all, drawing on research published in her...

Snapshot of German Iowa in the Global Midwest Symposium

German Iowa and the Global Midwest was a three-day symposium (Oct. 6-8, 2016) that explored Iowa's multicultural heritage. Part of a larger series of linked events, the 2016 Obermann Humanities Symposium was a tremendous success, gaining considerable local, statewide, and even national attention. Highlights Frank Trommler, an Ida Beam speaker, gave two public talks. The first, in the public...

2017 Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows Announced

The 2017 Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy will meet from January 9-13, 2017. The group of 16 students were selected from a competitive pool representing five colleges and in disciplines ranging from Library and Information Science to Community and Behavioral Health. Now in its eleventh year, the Graduate Institute offers a competitively selected group of UI graduate...

Engaged Filmmaking - Documentary Course Reflects Graduate Institute's Teachings

Nonfiction filmmaking is inherently collaborative. Anna Swanson [pictured in black shirt working with a student] asked the students in her "Publicly Engaged Documentary" course both to question and commit to the partnerships that such filmmaking necessitates. Go beyond getting a project done or thinking toward job skills, she recommended; instead, consider being an artist-advocate or a scholar...

A Letter to the Obermann Community

A Letter to Our Colleagues, Collaborators, and Friends The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies was founded on the belief that what makes colleges and universities invaluable and irreplaceable is that they bring people together for the express purpose of expanding horizons, using research and debate to test assumptions and claims, solving problems, and forming the habit of lifelong learning. At...
Man stretching animal hide for book

Sawyer Mellon Seminar Maps Cultural Exchanges Across Eurasia

International Scholars and Book Conservators Explore Premodern Texts Thousands of years before the advent of print, texts were recorded in manuscript form--written out by hand on papyrus, parchment, paper, silk, bamboo, or other materials. Scholars involved in the 2016-17 Mellon Sawyer Seminar at the University of Iowa are renewing their examination of these early texts, asking such questions...

Recent Events

Commitment to Internationalization Lecture Series promotional image

Commitment to Internationalization Lecture Series

Monday, March 11, 2019 4:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Philip Altbach is the fifth speaker in the Commitment to Internationalization lecture series. His talk, "The Peril and Promise of Internationalization in the Era of Trump, Brexit, and Global Competition," continues the conversation about the UI's vision and strategic themes for campus internationalization.

RSVP online.

Philip G. Altbach is Research Professor and Founding Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, where from 1994 to 2015 he was the Monan...

National Experiments in Career Diversity: A Day-long Obermann Working Symposium promotional image

National Experiments in Career Diversity: A Day-long Obermann Working Symposium

Friday, March 8, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Across the country, leaders of PhD programs in the humanities face a conundrum. How can a department honor the subjects, methods, and practices of their disciplines while also preparing graduates for diverse careers?

To inspire our thinking, we have invited directors of some of the most imaginative programs across the country for an Obermann Working Symposium as part of the Andrew W. Mellon–funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative. The daylong program will be held Friday, March 8 at the...

Facilitate a Better Gathering — a GET IT DONE! lunchtime workshop promotional image

Facilitate a Better Gathering — a GET IT DONE! lunchtime workshop

Friday, March 1, 2019 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street

How can you break out of the meeting mold of working diligently through an agenda? How can a class start to feel more like a community? How can we invite everyone to participate?

Borrowing from their readings in books that focus on creating community change, such as In the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer and Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown, several members of the Obermann Working Group "Modes and Models of Facilitation" will demonstrate several tools and methods for creating more...

Darwin Day 2019 (pt 1) promotional image

Darwin Day 2019 (pt 1)

Friday, February 22, 2019 (all day)
Biology Building East

Iowa City Darwin Day is a grand celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity! As in previous years, this year we welcome a slate of world-renowned scientists who will share their research in a series of professional seminars and public talks over two days. 

All events are free and open to the public.

DAY 1: Friday, February 22, Kollros Auditorium, Biology Building East

2:30 pm   Reception 3:00 pm  "Health and Survival in the Context of Medieval Mortality Crises." Sharon...
Darwin Day 2019 (pt 2) promotional image

Darwin Day 2019 (pt 2)

Friday, February 22, 2019 (all day)
University of Iowa Museum of Natural History

Iowa City Darwin Day is a grand celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity! As in previous years, this year we welcome a slate of world-renowned scientists who will share their research in a series of professional seminars and public talks over two days. 

All events are free and open to the public.

DAY 2: Saturday, February 23 Macbride Hall Auditorium

  9:00 am   Coffee and pastries   9:30 am  “Odd Animal Eyes: Insights into Evolution and Biotechnology." Jeanne Serb  10...
Multiple Pathways to Recovery: A Conversation about Addiction Research and Treatment Services promotional image

Multiple Pathways to Recovery: A Conversation about Addiction Research and Treatment Services

Wednesday, February 13, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

In this Obermann Conversation, three researchers and practitioners will discuss alternative forms of treating alcohol and drug addictions, including effectiveness for various populations.

Paul Gilbert conducts research to understand and address alcohol-related disparities. He is particularly interested in the ways that gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation shape drinking patterns, risk of alcohol use disorders, and use of treatment services. His current projects include an NIH-funded...