Upcoming Events

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...

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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

Incarcerate. Educate. Integrate. Prisoner access to education focus of September conference and new speaker series

In a recent meeting between prospective students and University of Iowa faculty, questions came up that sounded pretty routine: “Am I going to get credit for this?” “Will there be homework?” “What’s the time commitment?” These weren’t incoming freshman, however, but a group of men currently incarcerated at the Iowa Medical & Classification Center (“Oakdale”) in Coralville, IA. They were...

2018-19 Program Dates and Application Deadlines

FALL APPLICATION DEADLINES Obermann Center Fellows-in-Residence, Spring 2018 Application deadline: Sept. 12, 2017 The Obermann Fellows-in-Residence program is rooted in our mission: to support the work of individual scholars, while also providing Fellows with the opportunity to enrich an individual, discipline-specific project through interdisciplinary exchanges with a lively intellectual...
Jessica Pleyel ironing

Jessica Pleyel: Mending through Art

Wax guns, duck decoys, and nail polish. These are some of the items in artist Jessica Pleyel’s community engagement toolkit. The Obermann Graduate Institute alumna is currently bringing audiences together to consider gun violence against women, especially by domestic partners. Her exhibition, To(get)her: Meeting/Melting/Mending, had a month-long run at the Des Moines Social Club this spring, and...

All in the Mix: Erica Damman's Environmental Games

Remove the letter A from Scrabble and things get tricky pretty quickly. Likewise, remove apis melliferia, or the honeybee, from the world’s ecosystems and things start to fall apart. Almonds and apples, coffee and avocados—all become, if not extinct, then exceptionally rarer without bees to pollinate them. Industries that employ thousands of people are compromised. The food that sustains certain...

Summer Brings Russell Scholars, a pair of education projects, two arts projects, and digital collaborations to the Obermann Center

The Obermann Center will host multiple groups this summer, working on projects ranging from an edited anthology to a "film opera." The Philosophy of Physical Atomism is the focus of this year's Obermann Summer Seminar. These lectures, given by Bertrand Russell in the early months of 1918, were published in pairs in four issues...

Talking “Prophylactic Chats” with Fellow-in-Residence Edward Cohn

It's 1975, Lithuania. You receive a letter in the mail—brief, and on KGB letterhead. "You are invited to a friendly chat at our headquarters," it says. "Next Monday, 10 a.m." Gulp. These "chats"—frequent occurrences in Khrushchev-era Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia—are the current fascination of Obermann Fellow-in-Residence Edward Cohn. A professor of history at Grinnell College, Dr. Cohn...

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...