Upcoming Events

Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat promotional image

Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat

Monday, May 12 to Friday, May 16, 2025 (all day)
Have you been waiting all school year to make serious progress on your book manuscript, article, or grant application? Jump-start your summer writing project at the Obermann End-of-Year Writing Retreat May 12–16, 2025! Fifteen participants will enjoy a week of quiet productivity apart from the distractions of campus at the beautiful North Ridge Pavilion in Coralville. Daily catered lunches will provide an opportunity for exchange and discussion with other writers across campus. Each day will...
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, 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 problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
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, 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 problem-solve challenges faced by rural communities...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

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 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

Civic Science at Center of Summer Seminar

A new kind of research is at the heart of this June’s Obermann Summer Seminar. Based on a model of civic science, the seminar will bring together educators, developmental scientists, policy makers, and parents to consider how to improve school readiness for Iowa’s three- to five-year olds.“We are trying to stay very open to possible outcomes,” says John Spencer, Director of the DeLTA Center and...

Kevin Chamberlain's "Insect" Exhibit Opens

“Insects: A Collection in Multiple Dimensions”—featuring artwork by University of Iowa graduate student Kevin Chamberlain—opens May 3 at 5 p.m. in the UI Pentacrest Museums Gallery for the Arts, Humanities, and Sciences at the Old Capitol Museum.The exhibit includes digital photographs and three-dimensional artistic renderings of specimens from the UI Museum of Natural History’s 100-year-old...

Raquel Baker and Ted Gutsche

Raquel Baker (English, CLAS) and Ted Gutsche (Journalism and Mass Communication, CLAS) met via the Obermann Graduate Institute. Today, the two PhD candidates are using their mutual interests in civic engagement and social justice to create a General Education Literature course that takes students into the local community to find "concealed stories" and share them with a broader audience. One of the...

HASTAC Scholars Organize THATCamp Iowa City

From Friday, March 31 to Sunday, April 1, THATCamp Iowa City took place in The University of Iowa Main Library. THATCamp (The Humanities And Technology Camp) was organized by UI HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory) scholars Melody Dworak (MLIS candidate, Graduate College) and Katherine F. Montgomery (English PhD candidate, CLAS). Following an “unconference”...

stef shuster: Transgender Activist, Academic Pioneer

stef shuster recalls the frustration experienced when filling out the Institutional Review Board (IRB) application to conduct graduate research.“It was very formulaic, and so many of the questions were constructed in a binary way,” says the 29-year-old University of Iowa doctoral student in sociology who is conducting research on transgender communities and identities—and whose name is...

Lobbying for the Humanities

As director of the Obermann Center, I often represent the University of Iowa at national meetings. In March, I headed to Washington, D.C. to the annual meeting National Humanities Alliance (NHA) and its Annual Advocacy Day along with Colin Gordon, UI professor of history, and Derek Willard, Special Assistant to the President and Associate VP for Research in the UI Office of Governmental Relations...

Recent Events

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference promotional image

Mutations and Permutations of Care: Graduate Conference

Friday, April 4 12:00pm to Saturday, April 5, 2025 5:00pm
Schaeffer Hall
Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories promotional image

Webinar: Exploring Anne Frank & Difficult Life Stories

Friday, April 4, 2025 10:00am to 12:00pm
Virtual
Discover how Anne Frank’s story continues to shape conversations on empathy, education, and human rights in a compelling webinar featuring scholars from across the U.S. Join the University  of Iowa (UI) Anne Frank Initiative, an International Programs affinity group, on Friday, April 4, 2025, at 10 a.m. (CDT) as they host an insightful and engaging webinar featuring several esteemed authors from the groundbreaking book, Exploring Anne Frank and Difficult Life Stories (Routledge, 2025). Hear...
The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore promotional image

The Swine Republic: A reading by Chris Jones at Prairie Lights Bookstore

Thursday, April 3, 2025 7:00pm
Prairie Lights Books
Come to Prairie Lights Books for a special Darwin Day reading by Chris Jones, author of The Swine Republic. Published in 2023 by local publisher Ice Cube Press and named a 2024 "Great Reads from Great Places" book by the Library of Congress, The Swine Republic provides extensive research and reportage on the truth behind Iowa's infamously poor water quality, which you "...won't get ... from Iowa’s agricultural and political leaders." (icecubepress.com) Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature...
Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom promotional image

Beyond a Chilling Effect: Direct Action for Academic Freedom

Thursday, April 3, 2025 4:00pm
Jefferson Building
a Faculty First Responders Workshop sponsored by POROI, Iowa’s Project on Rhetoric of Inquiry At a time when academics are finding their work hyper-surveilled, banned from funding, or even scrubbed by AI, how can we vibrantly sustain our research, writing, and creative practice? In this Faculty First Responders workshop, participants will learn concrete steps to support freedom of inquiry for themselves and others. Topics include digital security measures, reducing risk of extremist attacks...
“The Unfinished Symphony”: Graduate and Professional Student Research and Connection Lab  promotional image

“The Unfinished Symphony”: Graduate and Professional Student Research and Connection Lab 

Friday, March 28, 2025 10:30am to 2:30pm
University Capitol Centre
All are welcome to attend this informal symposium designed for graduate and professional students who are in the beginning or the middle of their research to share what they've got to a group of people who are not necessarily well-versed in their discipline. We encourage you to come and talk about your works still in progress, your experiments that are under construction, and where you think all of that might lead (no conclusive data necessary). This is an opportunity to practice sharing your...
Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium promotional image

Locating Reproductive Justice: Global & Regional Perspectives — 2024–25 Obermann Arts & Humanities Symposium

Thursday, March 27 to Friday, March 28, 2025 (all day)
As calls for transnational solidarity among reproductive justice movements emerge, communities are asking how reproductive liberation is tethered to various social movements. Directed by Lina-Maria Murillo (Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies and History) and Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz (Communication Studies and Gender, Women's, & Sexuality Studies), this symposium brings together scholars and artists with local, regional, and global perspectives to bear on the pursuit of reproductive justice as we...