Upcoming Events
Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs
Friday, April 11, 2025 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Join the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Graduate College for lunch and an introduction to pitching your research to The Conversation US with Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Associate Vice President for Research.
The Conversation is an independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of academic experts for the public good. With a monthly readership of 20 million, The Conversation expertly shares a scholar’s expertise far...
Annual Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day 2025
Saturday, April 12, 2025 (all day)
In honor of Sonia Kovalevsky, the Department of Mathematics at the University of Iowa organizes Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day yearly with the goal to inspire young women interested in math and show them that math is like solving a puzzle. Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day is an opportunity for young women to engage in a day of networking, mentoring, and fun! The daylong program includes workshops, interactive talks, math related games and panels of professionals with...
Graduate Student Session with Mark Simpson-Vos, Obermann Editor-in-Residence
Thursday, April 17, 2025 10:00am to 11:00am
This interactive talk for PhD and MFA students in the writing disciplines will outline the publishing process for first books. The session will guide graduate students through the steps of the academic publishing process, with a focus on demystifying the journey from dissertation/thesis to manuscript to published book. Key topics will include identifying the right academic publisher, understanding peer review, negotiating contracts, and building a strong proposal. Led by Mark Simpson-Vos, Senior...
"Beyond Crisis: Restoring the Creative Partnership between Authors and Publishers" - Lecture by Mark Simpson-Vos
Thursday, April 17, 2025 3:30pm to 4:30pm
At this public lecture, Mark Simpson-Vos — Senior Executive Editor at University of North Carolina Press — will discuss the way commentators have since the 1970s routinely trotted out the idea that scholarly publishing is in crisis, and how the stance of publishers in particular has been to shrug off such ideas. In this moment, however, it is impossible to ignore the deep strains within the scholarly publishing ecosystem, amidst increasingly turbulent times for American higher education. Lament...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines
Upcoming Application Deadlines
News
Apply for the Summer '23 Humanities Without Walls Predoctoral Career Diversity Workshop
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....
A Project Postponed: Scholars Take Interdisciplinary Grant Project on the Road
When the pandemic postponed Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and GWSS, University of Iowa) and Shui-yin Sharon Yam's (Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies, University of Kentucky) Obermann residency for their Interdisciplinary Research Grant project last summer, they decided to postpone their work until they could meet in person. Though the Center remained closed to faculty this...
John Rapson: Looking Back at a Generous Collaborator
In the summer of 2014, it wasn't uncommon to find two faculty members padding around the Obermann Center in bare feet as they dashed from their upstairs offices to the downstairs library to watch movies. While it appeared to be a scholarly form of summer camp, John Rapson (School of Music) and Paul Kalina (Theatre) were deep in research as they broke down how music and movement interacted in old...
Using Virtual Reality to Train Math Teachers
Most children in the U.S. struggle to learn mathematics, with 50 to 75% of students scoring below proficient on achievement tests in grades 4 through 12. Children with disabilities such as autism tend to fare even worse. Clearly, math teachers must be equipped to educate students who require varying levels of support—but, for the most part, they aren’t. Logistical issues inherent in conventional...
Summer Interns at the Halfway Mark: A growing tomato, a gift from Brokaw, and nudity in the archives
It is around the halfway point of so many projects when the work is most difficult. The newness has worn off; the end is still out of reach, but close enough to give us an uneasy reminder of how much is yet to be completed. This is the experience of the ten UI graduate students who are at the midway point of their Humanities for the Public Good (HPG) internships. For eight weeks, they are working...
A Thousand Prospects for Research: A Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar Reflects
In late summer 2020, a new community initiative was formed in response to the impact of the pandemic on K12 students: Neighborhood NESTS. The Obermann Center responded by creating a new graduate research position, the Obermann Spelman Rockefeller Community Scholar, to work with the initiative, providing program management and deepening the project through disciplinary research. In this article...
