Upcoming Events

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 Daria Fisher Page, Brian R. Farrell, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will connect regional researchers and professionals who work with rural populations. Participants will collaborate to share their work and develop solutions that address the unique issues faced by rural communities, such as resource extraction, limited investment and digital infrastructure, low quality water and food, and rural-to-urban migration...
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 Daria Fisher Page, Brian R. Farrell, and Ryan T. Sakoda (UI College of Law), Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research will connect regional researchers and professionals who work with rural populations. Participants will collaborate to share their work and develop solutions that address the unique issues faced by rural communities, such as resource extraction, limited investment and digital infrastructure, low quality water and food, and rural-to-urban migration...
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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26) promotional image

Application Deadline: Obermann Working Groups (2025–26)

Wednesday, April 9, 2025 5:00pm
Obermann Center Working Groups provide space, structure, and discretionary funding ($500 per year for 3 years) 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 explore new work and to share their own research, to organize a symposium, and to develop grant proposals. This program allows participants from across the campus and beyond to explore complex issues at a...
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

Was the Word: Crossing the Line

Crossing Borders, a community storytelling project, crossingborders.us, started by Obermann Graduate Institute Fellows Raquel Baker (English, CLAS), Ted Gutsche (Journalism, CLAS), and Daniel Kinney (Art Education, College of Education), will host this month's Was The Word. This is Working Group Theatre's monthly storytelling, poetry, and music show at the Englert Theatre, with benefits going to...

Udaykumar and the Solar Cooker Project

H.S. Udaykumar (Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering) had a chance coffee shop encounter with his friend and colleague, R. Rajagopal (Geography, CLAS), which became the first in a series of events that would dramatically change his life—down to what he eats and reads.“ I was at T-spoons, totally oblivious,” recalls Uday, “and Raj accosts me and announces, ‘You are going to India! There is...

Working Groups Look Ahead to Second Year

2011-2012 has been the inaugural year for the Obermann Working Groups. This program, modeled on successful programs at several centers around the country, is intended to provide space, structure, and discretionary funding for groups of faculty and advanced graduate students with a shared intellectual interest. We have had four Working Groups this year: Intergenre Explorations, Women's Health and...
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Katie Porter's New Book Examines Effects of Consumer Debt

In 2008, Katie Porter (pictured below), then a UI College of Law professor, proposed a topic for the Obermann Summer Seminar on consumer debt in America. For two weeks the following summer, she and a group of eleven participant—including professors in law, psychology, urban and regional planning and medicine—met at Obermann to discuss different perspectives on this topic. Each participant came...

Interdisciplinarity is Focus of Obermann Workshop

Richard Handler, Director of the Program in Global Development Studies and Professor of Anthropology at the University of Virginia will lead a discussion on March 5 at 3:00 pm based on his career as a scholar, teacher and administrator whose work cuts across the geographical and disciplinary boundaries. This informal conversation -- "The Art of Interdisciplinarity" -- will take place in the...

Humanities and Public Life Series Announced

Teresa Mangum, Director of the Obermann Center, is co-editing a new book series for The University of Iowa Press with Anne Valk, Associate Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for the Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at Brown University. Humanities and Public Life will feature books examining projects using the arts and humanities to promote community building and civic change. These...

Recent Events

National Experiments in Career Diversity: A Day-long Obermann Working Symposium promotional image

National Experiments in Career Diversity: A Day-long Obermann Working Symposium

Friday, March 8, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library
Across the country, leaders of PhD programs in the humanities face a conundrum. How can a department honor the subjects, methods, and practices of their disciplines while also preparing graduates for diverse careers? To inspire our thinking, we have invited directors of some of the most imaginative programs across the country for an Obermann Working Symposium as part of the Andrew W. Mellon–funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative. The daylong program will be held Friday, March 8 at the...
Facilitate a Better Gathering — a GET IT DONE! lunchtime workshop promotional image

Facilitate a Better Gathering — a GET IT DONE! lunchtime workshop

Friday, March 1, 2019 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
How can you break out of the meeting mold of working diligently through an agenda? How can a class start to feel more like a community? How can we invite everyone to participate? Borrowing from their readings in books that focus on creating community change, such as In the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer and Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown, several members of the Obermann Working Group "Modes and Models of Facilitation" will demonstrate several tools and methods for creating more...
Darwin Day 2019 (pt 1) promotional image

Darwin Day 2019 (pt 1)

Friday, February 22, 2019 (all day)
Biology Building East
Iowa City Darwin Day is a grand celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity! As in previous years, this year we welcome a slate of world-renowned scientists who will share their research in a series of professional seminars and public talks over two days.  All events are free and open to the public. DAY 1: Friday, February 22, Kollros Auditorium, Biology Building East 2:30 pm   Reception 3:00 pm  "Health and Survival in the Context of Medieval Mortality Crises." Sharon...
Darwin Day 2019 (pt 2) promotional image

Darwin Day 2019 (pt 2)

Friday, February 22, 2019 (all day)
University of Iowa Museum of Natural History
Iowa City Darwin Day is a grand celebration of science and its many contributions to humanity! As in previous years, this year we welcome a slate of world-renowned scientists who will share their research in a series of professional seminars and public talks over two days.  All events are free and open to the public. DAY 2: Saturday, February 23 Macbride Hall Auditorium   9:00 am   Coffee and pastries   9:30 am  “Odd Animal Eyes: Insights into Evolution and Biotechnology." Jeanne Serb  10...
Multiple Pathways to Recovery: A Conversation about Addiction Research and Treatment Services promotional image

Multiple Pathways to Recovery: A Conversation about Addiction Research and Treatment Services

Wednesday, February 13, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
In this Obermann Conversation, three researchers and practitioners will discuss alternative forms of treating alcohol and drug addictions, including effectiveness for various populations. Paul Gilbert conducts research to understand and address alcohol-related disparities. He is particularly interested in the ways that gender, race/ethnicity, and sexual orientation shape drinking patterns, risk of alcohol use disorders, and use of treatment services. His current projects include an NIH-funded...
The US / Mexico Border in Context promotional image

The US / Mexico Border in Context

Thursday, December 6, 2018 4:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Several scholars will help us put current events at the U.S. / Mexico border into perspective. Lina-Maria Murillo (History and GWSS) received her doctorate in Borderlands History at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in 2016. Currently, she is completing her manuscript titled From Population Control to Reproductive Freedom: Contraception and Race in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. Rene Rocha (Political Science) focuses on policy analysis, including questions such as: How does immigration...