Upcoming Events

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Monday, June 2, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Tuesday, June 3, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Wednesday, June 4, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp promotional image

2025 Virtual Dissertation Camp

Thursday, June 5, 2025 9:00am to 1:00pm
Virtual
The Writing Center's Dissertation Writing Camp takes place via Zoom from Tuesday May 27 to Friday June 6. Graduate students from colleges and departments across campus meet in facilitated discussion groups, write together, track their progress on blogs, meet individually with Writing Center consultants, and attend presentations on dissertation-related topics. Events include presentations from staff in the UI Libraries, the Graduate College, and Student Health about resources to support graduate...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025 promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Writing Collective, Summer 2025

Friday, May 23, 2025 5:00pm
Virtual
This program offers companionship and accountability to University of Iowa artists, scholars, and researchers working on any kind of academic writing project (ex. academic articles/essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, edited volumes, nonfiction) who want dedicated time, a cozy space, and a community for the practice of writing.In Summer 2025, two write-on-site groups will meet in our Writers' Attic at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies at 111 Church St...
Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Fall Application Deadline: Book Ends Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 5:00pm
Co-sponsored by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies and the Office of the Vice President for Research, Book Ends—Obermann/OVPR 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. Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three...
Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2026)

Wednesday, October 8, 2025 5:00pm
111 Church Street
Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (IDRG) foster collaborative scholarship and creative work by offering recipients time and space to exchange new ideas leading to invention, creation, and publication. IDRG groups work at the Obermann Center for two weeks, usually in July and/or August. Applicants propose work on a project with colleagues from across the University, across disciplines within their own department, or with colleagues from other parts of the country or the world. Projects...
Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2026)

Friday, October 24, 2025 11:59pm
111 Church Street
The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 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...

News

Healing Arts: Scholar Traces Journey of a 15th-Century Medical Book

Twice now, art historian Sarah Kyle has visited the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice to study the Roccabonella Herbal, a fifteenth-century illustrated book of plant medicines. Neither the text of the 900-page volume nor its more than 450 images are available digitally, and Kyle is interested in the interplay of the two. “Although the book is extremely fragile,” says the associate professor...

Full audio of Trudy Peterson's keynote lecture on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

On March 1, 2018, Trudy H. Peterson delivered the Ida Beam Distinguished Visiting Professorship Keynote Lecture, “Best When Used By: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” as part of the 2018 Provost's Global Forum/Obermann Humanities Symposium, "Against Amnesia: Archives, Evidence, and Social Justice." Listen to the full audio below:

Archives as a Space for Social Justice Is Focus of Provost's Global Forum/Obermann Humanities Symposium

“It is essential to seize the power of archives and use it to hold institutional and government leaders accountable. All aspects of society should be documented, not simply those where power has traditionally resided.” —Randall Jimerson, “Archives for All: Professional Responsibility and Social Justice” Animating the Archives Archives conjure up visions of crumbling files tied with...

Two UI Students Selected as HWW Fellows

Two University of Iowa graduate students have been named as Humanities Without Walls consortium 2018 pre-doctoral workshop fellows. Lydia Maunz-Breese (English, CLAS) and Makayla Steiner (English, CLAS) will be among 30 students from the consortium who will participate in a three-week career diversity workshop in Chicago. Under the leadership of the Chicago Humanities Festival...

First Iowa City Archive Crawl Celebrates Treasures in Local Collections

Hold History in Your Hands at the First-Ever Iowa City Archives Crawl What gems hide in plain sight in Iowa City’s libraries, museums, and archives? At the area’s first-ever archives crawl, visitors can snoop in between the pages of historic diaries, read other people's mail, hold feathers and fossils, and peer into mysteries revealed by historic artifacts like swords and locks of...
Graduate Institute participants doing a movement exercise

UI students learn the true meaning of public engagement

Thank you to Emily Nelson and Iowa Now for this article about the 2018 Obermann Graduate Institute Some scholars may consider giving a presentation, curating an exhibit, or hosting a medical screening for community groups to be a form of public engagement. Although each of these is an important contribution, the annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Engagement and the Academy encourages...

Recent Events

Science, the State, and the Public Trust: Historical Perspectives. A Panel Discussion promotional image

Science, the State, and the Public Trust: Historical Perspectives. A Panel Discussion

Saturday, April 5, 2025 10:45am
Phillips Hall
A discussion of historical perspectives on science, the state, and the public trust with Department of History faculty Viridiana Hernández Fernández, Shane Bobrycki, Robert Rouphail, Nicholas Yablon, and Beth Yale This event is part of Iowa City Darwin Day Science Fest, a celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity, which takes place on April 3, 4 & 5. The 2025 speakers are Tyrone Hayes (UC Berkeley), Chris Jones (Iowa Driftless Water Defenders), and David Cwiertny (Civil...
A Healthy Iowa Needs Clean Water: A public talk by David Cwiertny promotional image

A Healthy Iowa Needs Clean Water: A public talk by David Cwiertny

Saturday, April 5, 2025 10:00am
Phillips Hall
David Cwiertny is the William D. Ashton Professor of Civil Engineering and Director of the Environmental Policy Research Program at the University of Iowa. His research specializes in the development of nanomaterials based approaches for resource sustainability and the environmental occurrence, fate and effects of emerging pollutant classes. At the UI, he directs the state-funded Center for Health Effects of Environmental Contamination, which conducts research to identify, measure, and prevent...
Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference promotional image

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference

Friday, April 4, 2025 9:00pm to 6:00pm
Schaeffer Hall
Bring the Noise: Estrogen Sensitivity in Frogs. Tyrone B. Hayes promotional image

Bring the Noise: Estrogen Sensitivity in Frogs. Tyrone B. Hayes

Friday, April 4, 2025 4:30pm
Biology Building East
Tyrone Hayes is the Judy Chandler Webb Distinguished Chair for Innovative Teaching and Research and a professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the role of steroid hormones in amphibian development and he conducts both laboratory and field studies in the U.S. and Africa. The two main areas of interest are metamorphosis and sex differentiation, but he is also interested in growth (larval and adult) and hormonal regulation of aggressive behavior...
Iowa: Land of Troubled Water, a talk by Chris Jones promotional image

Iowa: Land of Troubled Water, a talk by Chris Jones

Friday, April 4, 2025 3:30pm
Biology Building East
Chris Jones is author of The Swine Republic which was named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress. The book explores Iowa's infamously poor water quality through an analysis of research and reportage. Until recently, Jones was a research engineer with IIHR-Hydroscience & Engineering at the University of Iowa. He holds a PhD in Analytical Chemistry from Montana State University and a BA in chemistry and biology from Simpson College. Previous career stops include...
Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference promotional image

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference

Friday, April 4, 2025 12:00pm to 5:00pm
Schaeffer Hall