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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann International Fellowships (Spring 2027)

Friday, September 18, 2026 11:59pm
111 Church Street

The UI Obermann Center for Advanced studies is accepting applications for Spring 2027 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...

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop promotional image

Application Deadline: Book Ends, Obermann Book Completion Workshop

Wednesday, September 23, 2026 5:00pm
Virtual

Books 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 UI faculty members with significant research responsibilities turn promising manuscripts into important, field-changing, published books.

Book Ends brings together a panel of senior scholars for a candid, constructive three-hour workshop on a faculty member’s book manuscript. The award provides a $500 honorarium for two external...

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Interdisciplinary Research Grants (Summer 2027)

Wednesday, October 7, 2026 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 Symposium Directorship (2027–28) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Symposium Directorship (2027–28)

Wednesday, October 28, 2026 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Is there a burning topic in your discipline or a topic that cuts across disciplines that we should bring to campus? Is there a format for the conversation that can energize an intellectual community around that topic? That might be the perfect topic for an Obermann Symposium!

In addition to a compelling topic, we invite co-directors to propose national and international speakers who can offer richly diverse perspectives on the symposium theme. We also want to highlight the work of UI and local...

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2027–30)

Wednesday, April 7, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups led by faculty that may include advanced graduate students, staff members, and community members with a shared intellectual interest.

Groups have used this opportunity to share their work in progress or draw up a set of readings they want to undertake and discuss. Others have organized conferences, applied for grants together, written articles together, designed new courses, taken field trips, organized...

News

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Wall to Wall

Standing on the Great Wall of China in 1991, Mohammad Chaichian wondered at the feat of architecture and engineering that extended in front of him as far as he could see. Although the wall was ostensibly built to keep out nomadic “barbarians,” Chaichian, a sociology professor with training in architecture and urban planning, wondered how those on the other side, the so-called barbarians, viewed it...
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Obermann Part of Major Collaborative Mellon Award

Obermann Center Member of Major Collaborative Mellon Grant The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded $3,000,000 for an innovative two-year project, “Humanities Without Walls,” that will include faculty and graduate students at the University of Iowa. In addition to the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the collaboration includes fourteen humanities institutes in the Midwest and beyond. By...

The Heart of the Chicago Humanities Summit

The following reflections on the recent Chicago Humanities Summit were written by H. Glenn Penny (History, CLAS), who was one of several University of Iowa faculty members in attendance. On January 9, 2014 the Chicago Humanities Festival (CHF) joined forces with the Modern Language Association (MLA), the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (AAAS), and local humanities centers along with the...

Micromagnets: On the Path To Greater Energy Efficiency

Johna Leddy (Chemistry, CLAS) is very enthusiastic about the possibility of improving electrochemical systems such as batteries and fuel cells to provide energy and fuels with greater efficiency. “We might be able to build a low temperature fuel cell that runs on alcohol,” says Leddy, who was a Fall 2013 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence. “It could make us less dependent on foreign oil and processes...

Obermann Fellows in Conversation—Race Relations in the U.S. South

A wonderful aspect of the Obermann Center is the way in which people from across the University meet and have unexpected conversations. While many of our programs invite people to form unique collaborations to achieve a specific outcome, such as publishing an article or developing a grant application, our longest running program, the Fellows-in-Residence, is intended to support individual projects...

2014 Graduate Institute Fellows

Seventeen UI graduate students have been selected as Obermann Graduate Fellows and will participate in the 2014 Obermann Graduate Institute. The Institute is a highly competitive program for graduate students across the University who are interested in developing publicly engaged dimensions for research, arts, and teaching. The weeklong Institute (January 13-January 17, 2014) includes...

Recent Events

Amal Kassir Writing Workshop: Using Writing as a Tool for Healing promotional image

Amal Kassir Writing Workshop: Using Writing as a Tool for Healing

Friday, April 29, 2022 1:00pm to 2:30pm
North Hall

FREE – SPACE LIMITED TO 12 STUDENTS

SIGN UP: https://bit.ly/AmalWorkshop

Poet Amal Kassir will be taking part in the Anne Frank Tree Planting Ceremony on the UI Pentacrest at 5:00 pm on April 29. Prior to the ceremony, she has offered to lead a writing workshop for students in the School of Social Work.

Join Amal in a brave space, where we will be exploring our own stories for healing that may go beyond us, from within and back! Amal believes we have the capacity to control our narrative...

A Conversation with Amal Kassir: Celebrating Poetree promotional image

A Conversation with Amal Kassir: Celebrating Poetree

Thursday, April 28, 2022 9:30am to 10:30am
Phillips Hall
What Do We Mean by Research Now? Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges promotional image

What Do We Mean by Research Now? Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges

Friday, April 22, 2022 11:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual

What Do We Mean by Research Now? Creating Culturally Attuned Teams for Wicked Challenges

The very acronym STEM assumes that when scientists try to solve complex problems, they work in teams. Only recently, however, have those teams stretched to include artists, humanities scholars, and social scientists. These expansive teams often work with facilitators grounded in the psychology of relationship-building and the recognition that the success of technical solutions is deeply entangled with...

Behind the Big House—Preserving and Interpreting the Material History of Slavery in the U.S. promotional image

Behind the Big House—Preserving and Interpreting the Material History of Slavery in the U.S.

Thursday, April 21, 2022 3:00pm to 4:30pm
Virtual

When residents and tourists visit sites of slavery, whose stories are told? All too often the lives of slaveowners are centered, obscuring the lives of enslaved people. Jodi Skipper’s new book, Behind the Big House, candidly documents her eight-year collaboration with the Behind the Big House program, a community-based model used at local historic sites to address slavery in the collective narrative of U.S. history and culture. As an academic, Skipper also seeks to help other activist scholars...

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...