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...

View more events

Spacer

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

cGVmfc78cKREeztg-Zo-RvKAZGO_cQXQDFoPSfJI3Ts.jpg

Scenes from Anthropocene Symposium

Several keynote lectures from the 2014-15 Obermann Humanities Symposium, Energy Cultures in the Age of the Anthropocene were filmed and are now available on the Obermann's YouTube channel. Lonnie Thompson: "Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options"; Jennifer Kayle and UI dancers: "Smoke-Screen: This and Other Warnings"; Charles Mann: "Energy and Climate: A Problem from Hell"...
Schoenberg Self Portrait

The Allure of Concision — Matthew Arndt’s Fascination with Schoenberg’s Shortest Works

“Concise!” In 1909, the composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote to a friend, “My music must be short. Concise! In two notes, not built, but ‘expressed.’ And the result is, I hope, without stylized and sterilized drawn-out sentiment.” This call to simplification marked the beginning of a two-year period of radically unconventional music, even compared with his earlier nontonal music. This period...
Shannon Jackson

Shannon Jackson challenges higher education to consider--The Way We Perform Now

At the 2014 Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes, Shannon Jackson, Goldman Chair in the Arts and Humanities at the University of California-Berkeley, stole a very impressive show as she previewed the book she is writing with a Guggenheim fellowship: The Way We Perform Now. We are delighted that Jackson is coming to the UI for a public talk on Wednesday, March 24 from 3:30-5:00 at the...

Smoke-Screen: Dance Performance Explore Themes of the Anthropocene

Smoke-Screen Debuts as Finale of Anthropocene Symposium Jennifer Kayle (Dance, CLAS; pictured left) has spent the past few months immersed in books like Diane Ackerman’s The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, as well as works about how complex science can be effectively communicated to a broader public. This research has been...
A chemical synapse releasing neurotransmitters.

On the Trail of Parkinson’s — Jon Doorn Seeks Clues to Stop Neurodegenerative Disease

The second most common neurodegenerative disease is Parkinson’s Disease (PD). It affects more than 1 million Americans and 10 million people worldwide. The cause of this prevalent disease remains largely unknown. Genetics play a role but cannot account for all cases. While age is one contributor, it isn’t clear whether Parkinson’s comes with age or...
HWW logo

UI Faculty and Grad Students Selected for Humanities Without Walls Opportunities

The Obermann Center is delighted to be a member of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded Humanities Without Walls consortium, led by the University of Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities. Already, our graduate students and faculty are benefiting from this innovative partnership. Note: A second round of applications will be invited soon for summer 2015 seed grants. In fall 2015, we...

Recent Events

Deadline: Apply to Develop a Graduate Humanities Lab Course in Summer 2022 promotional image

Deadline: Apply to Develop a Graduate Humanities Lab Course in Summer 2022

Tuesday, April 19, 2022 (all day)

The Mellon Humanities for the Public Good Initiative invites applications from UI faculty and partners to design a Humanities Lab. We define a “Lab” as an applied, experiential approach to teaching and learning that offers graduate students meaningful ways to connect advanced studies in the humanities to both a social challenge and skills valued in multiple career settings. The Lab grant will be awarded to one or more humanities or humanities-adjacent faculty members who, along with...

Publicly Engaged Humanities Graduate Education by Degrees promotional image

Publicly Engaged Humanities Graduate Education by Degrees

Tuesday, April 12, 2022 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

Across the country, colleges and universities are reimagining humanities graduate education to address students’ commitment to public-facing work and professional development needs. As a result, many institutions have taken steps to tailor humanities pedagogy to meet student demands by creating master’s programs and graduate certificates in Public Humanities. As the University of Iowa Andrew W. Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good Initiative participants design a graduate certificate and...

Judaism in the Diary of Anne Frank: A Discussion promotional image

Judaism in the Diary of Anne Frank: A Discussion

Monday, April 11, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

As we await the arrival of the Anne Frank Tree, which will be planted on the University of Iowa Pentacrest on April 29, 2022, we encourage people of all ages to read the book that is at the heart of this event. Better yet—read it in community!

To provide context to your reading, we’re offering three in-person discussions at the Iowa City Public Library (123 S. Linn St., Iowa City). All of the discussions are free and open to the general public. 

In this second session, Josh Hare, program...

Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space promotional image

Dangerous, Smelly, and Covered in Dirt: The Future of Humans in Space

Saturday, April 9, 2022 11:30am to 12:15pm
Macbride Hall

Dr. Kelly Weinersmith is a scientist and author. An adjunct assistant professor at Rice University, she studies behavioral manipulation of animal hosts by their parasites. She has worked on systems that infect the brains of fish, and wasps that control the behavior of other wasps before eating them. Dr. Weinersmith and her partner, the cartoonist Zach Weinersmith, coauthored the New York Times bestselling book Soonish.

This talk is part of the 2022 Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest. All events...

Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University promotional image

Living, Loving, and Landscapes: How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Us Navigate it All. Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu, Yale University

Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:45am to 11:30am
Macbride Hall

Dr. C. Brandon Ogbunu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Yale University and a visiting research scientist at the American Museum of Natural History. He uses experimental evolution, mathematical modeling, and computational biology to better understand the underlying causes and consequences of disease. He is a recipient of the UNCF-Merck Award, the Broad Institute Diversity Fellowship and the Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship.

This talk is...

Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? Dr. Shamar Chin promotional image

Are Tiny Ancient Algae the Canaries of our Oceans? Dr. Shamar Chin

Saturday, April 9, 2022 10:00am to 10:45am
Macbride Hall

Dr. Shamar Chin is Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Iowa. Dr. Chin is a micropaleontologist, specializing in nannofossils, which she uses to understand climatological and ecological histories.

This talk is part of the 2022 Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest. All events are free and open to the public.