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

Jack and Trudi Rosazza

Supporting the Obermann Center — Jack and Trudi Rosazza

The support that the Obermann Center receives from friends such as Jack and Trudi Rosazza helps us to deepen and extend our work. This year, for example, we were able to send our director, Teresa Mangum, to a workshop with the OpEd Project. This visionary organization helps underrepresented voices land on the opinion pages of our nation’s newspapers, thereby changing discourses. In November, the...

THE YES MEN leads workshop on UI campus

POROI co-sponsored the YES MEN this August in their visit with the UI Lecture Committee. During that visit, the YES MEN lead a workshop in which they broke down their signature, satirical style of creative, performance-based activism, advising participants on their own change-making initiatives. Participants included student government representatives working to eliminate plastic waste from the...
Dave Gould

To the Class of 2019 - Inspiration from Obermann Public Scholar Dave Gould

David Gould, Obermann Public Scholar, is spending this fall semester introducing University of Iowa undergraduates to a cast of amazing, inspiring visitors. From a master storyteller from The Moth and musicians from the Cirque du Soleil , to the co-founder of Girls on the Run and the creator of an online funding company, this eclectic group of guests will help students consider what makes for a...
Dickens Universe

Opportunities for Grad Students at Obermann

The Obermann Center offers a growing number of opportunities for UI graduate students—from courses to a research assistantship. As we begin the 2015-16 academic year, we wanted to provide an overview for students, as well as for faculty advisors and graduate directors. Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy This year, we celebrate the 10th anniversary of our signature program, the...
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Philosopher Promotes Everyday Practice of His Field—And Lands Dream Job

“The Institute [on Engagement and the Academy] really pushed me to figure out what civically engaged scholarship looked like,” says Brian Collins. “It was—and sometimes still is—difficult for me to wrap my head around how my scholarship as a philosopher could directly apply to and benefit from this kind of work.” That has not stopped Collins from imagining ways to share philosophy and its...
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Medieval Scholars Get Messy with NEH Manuscript Production Seminar

Most of what we know about the literature, art, and science of the Middle Ages has been interpreted by scholars from texts hand-scribed on parchment. And though they return to these illuminating manuscripts for more clues, few scholars deeply understand the process of their production. Providing scholars with hands-on experience is the central...

Recent Events

Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered - 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium promotional image

Misfitting: Disability Broadly Considered - 2019 Obermann Humanities Symposium

Thursday, April 4 to Saturday, April 6, 2019 (all day)

Disability is a universal human experience. Like gender, race, class, and sexuality, disability affects everyone in multiple ways, shaping and informing our notions of normality, family, community, fitness, and worth. Disability Studies, one of the fastest growing interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences and health sciences, examines abilities in the context of societies and cultures as they change over time. The symposium will consider the pervasive (though often unnoticed)...

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium promotional image

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium

Saturday, March 30, 2019 (all day)
University Capitol Centre

Reading and Re-translation" is an international and interdisciplinary colloquium dedicated to the theorization and practice of reading. With funding from an International Programs Major Projects Award, organizers and speakers from around the globe will focus on the current state of research on reading and re-translation and will generate scholarly and creative exchanges between colleagues in diverse fields in the arts, sciences, literatures, and humanities.

The conference opens with a special...

Finding Yourself in Academia: A Diné Historian’s Experience promotional image

Finding Yourself in Academia: A Diné Historian’s Experience

Friday, March 29, 2019 1:30pm to 3:00pm
University Capitol Centre

The Graduate History Society welcomes...

Dr. Farina King
Assistant Professor of History
Cherokee and Indigenous Studies Dept
Northeastern State University
Tahlequah, Oklahoma

Dr. Farina King is an assistant professor of history and affiliate of the Cherokee and Indigenous Studies Department at Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and received her Ph.D. from Arizona, her M.A. in African History from the University of Wisconsin and a B.A. from Brigham Young University with a...

Out There:  A Symposium on Provocative Research, Pedagogy, and Academic Freedom promotional image

Out There: A Symposium on Provocative Research, Pedagogy, and Academic Freedom

Friday, March 29, 2019 9:00am to 4:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

Academics and intellectual freedom are increasingly under attack in the United States. This is demonstrated, for example, by the November 2016 launch of the Professor Watchlist by Turning Point USA and the targeted harassment of faculty aimed at intimidating educators and stifling the exchange of ideas and thoughtful debate. This symposium gathers administrators, faculty, and graduate students from across the University of Iowa to discuss the climate currently informing academic life, and to...

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium promotional image

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium

Friday, March 29 to Saturday, March 30, 2019 (all day)
University Capitol Centre

Reading and Re-translation" is an international and interdisciplinary colloquium dedicated to the theorization and practice of reading. With funding from an International Programs Major Projects Award, organizers and speakers from around the globe will focus on the current state of research on reading and re-translation and will generate scholarly and creative exchanges between colleagues in diverse fields in the arts, sciences, literatures, and humanities.

The conference opens with a special...

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium promotional image

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium

Thursday, March 28 to Saturday, March 30, 2019 (all day)
University Capitol Centre

Reading and Re-translation" is an international and interdisciplinary colloquium dedicated to the theorization and practice of reading. With funding from an International Programs Major Projects Award, organizers and speakers from around the globe will focus on the current state of research on reading and re-translation and will generate scholarly and creative exchanges between colleagues in diverse fields in the arts, sciences, literatures, and humanities.

The conference opens with a special...