Upcoming Events

Book Ends Information Session (virtual) promotional image

Book Ends Information Session (virtual)

Tuesday, February 3, 2026 8:30am to 9:00am
Virtual

Book 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 faculty members in turning promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books. Read more about the program.

Interested applicants are invited to learn more about the program and application process at a virtual information session on Tuesday, February 3, at 8:30 a.m. Obermann Center Director Luis Martín-Estudillo...

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Wednesday, February 25, 2026 8:30am to 4:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete tips and operational strategies that support planning and longer-term sustainability.

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

The Research Development Office is hosting an in person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Thursday, March 26 to Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium promotional image

Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research — 2025–26 Obermann Symposium

Friday, March 27, 2026 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Directed by Brian R. Farrell, Daria Fisher Page, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will bring together scholars, community leaders from across the U.S., and professionals who work with rural populations and in rural spaces. During the symposium, attendees will be invited to collaborate in theorizing rurality, share how it impacts their work, examine how rurality is represented and celebrated, and begin to discuss challenges...

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

The Latino Midwest

Latino culture has been helping shape the United States for hundreds of years, even before the U.S. was a country. Though the Latino population in the Midwest is small compared to other areas of the country, it continues to grow, infusing Latino art, literature, and music into the culture of the heartland.The Latino Midwest, the 2012-13 University of Iowa Obermann-International Programs Humanities...

Migration Letters

Alejandro García-Lemos first came to the U.S. from his home in Colombia in order to attend graduate school in 1997. The painter, who now works as an interpreter for immigrants in hospitals and at the courthouse in Columbia, South Carolina, had visited the U.S. many times before finally decided to stay. "You meet someone, life changes," he says with a small laugh. The process of staying has hardly...

Overlap of Gesture and Memory

When Susan Wagner Cook, an assistant professor in Psychology (CLAS) submitted a paper on hand gestures a few years ago, she received feedback from reviewers that her understanding of memory was about twenty years behind. Disappointed, but also knowing that she was unlikely to assimilate two decades of research into her thinking without serious commitment, she tabled the paper. She gave it second...

Fall 2012 Fellows-in-Residence

The Obermann Center welcomes its Fall 2012 Fellows-in-Residence next week. Six UI faculty members and one UI graduate student will work on projects ranging from the historical relationship between humans and mosquitoes in the Upper Mississippi River Basin to mathematical problems in X-ray dark-field tomography. The Fellows include the recipient of a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship...

Taking a Page from Industry to Clean Up Drinking Water

There is more in that glass of water you just drank than meets the eye. Caffeine, perfumes, ibuprofen, and hormones are just a few of the pollutants that are not regulated and for which wastewater plants do not commonly treat. Known as “emerging contaminates,” these pollutants are accepted largely because there is no clear way to remove them. And so we all drink them regularly. What if we could...
Lisa Heineman

Working Group Members Perform and Gain an Award

Lisa Heineman (History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies) and Kim Marra (Theatre Arts and American Studies) formed one of the inaugural 2011 Obermann Working Groups in order to explore how scholars might communicate their academic interests through performance and artists might use researchers’ methods to explore issues they usually address before live audiences. As scholars, Marra and...
View more articles
Subscribe to newsletter

Recent Events

Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis promotional image

Obermann Humanities 3-Minute Thesis

Thursday, September 29, 2022 4:00pm to 5:00pm
111 Church Street

The Obermann Center's 2022 Humanities Three-Minute Thesis (3MT) competition will take place on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, from 4 to 5 p.m. at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (111 Church St.). It will be an in-person event, free and open to all. Please support our humanities graduate students and attend!

This 3MT is specially designed to feature the work of UI humanities graduate students. The event challenges graduate students to articulate their complex research clearly and concisely...

Works on Memory: Concepts and Projects - Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France promotional image

Works on Memory: Concepts and Projects - Memorial to the Abolition of Slavery in Nantes, France

Thursday, September 29, 2022 3:30pm to 4:30pm
Virtual
Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium Info Session promotional image

Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium Info Session

Thursday, September 22, 2022 8:30am to 9:30am
Virtual

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies is reimagining its longtime Humanities Symposium as an Arts & Humanities Symposium. We want to lighten the planning and organizational work for symposia directors so that they can focus on the inspiring work of connecting with one another, sharing scholarly and creative discoveries, and experimenting with creative, interactive approaches to artistic and humanistic research. We hope that streamlined planning will open space for imaginative cross...

The Impact of Schools on Mental Health: An Obermann Conversation promotional image

The Impact of Schools on Mental Health: An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, September 21, 2022 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Virtual

Schools play a crucial role in young people's mental health, something that became extremely clear during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the CDC, in 2021, 37% of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health, and 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year. Schools provide connectedness to mentors, friends, and services. At the same time, they can also be sites of difficulty in the form of bullying or stress from learning obstacles. 

In this...

Seeding Excellence: OVPR Community Engaged Scholars Mini-Design Workshop

Friday, September 16, 2022 1:00pm to 3:00pm
111 Church Street

On Friday, Sept. 16 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Obermann Center (111 Church St.), the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of Community Engagement will hold a mini-design workshop for faculty members who plan to apply for a Seeding Excellence: OVPR Community Engaged Scholars grant. Free and open to all. Register here.

About the Seeding Excellence Initiative – OVPR Community Engaged Scholars (AHSS)

SEI, a two-year initiative, aims to sustain the continued growth of the campus...

Info Session for Summer '23 Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Workshop promotional image

Info Session for Summer '23 Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Workshop

Friday, September 16, 2022 8:30am to 9:30am
Virtual

Launched in 2015 as an initiative of the Humanities Without Walls (HWW) consortium, this annual workshop welcomes 30 participants each summer from higher education institutions across the United States. HWW Summer Workshop Fellows work in a variety of academic disciplines. They are scholars and practitioners who bring experience in community building, museum curation, filmmaking, radio programming, social media, project management, research, writing, and teaching. They are invested in issues of...