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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

Obermann center house

Fall 2012 Fellows-in-Residence

The Obermann Center welcomes its Fall 2012 Fellows-in-Residence next week. Six UI faculty members and one UI graduate student will work on projects ranging from the historical relationship between humans and mosquitoes in the Upper Mississippi River Basin to mathematical problems in X-ray dark-field tomography. The Fellows include the recipient of a Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship...

Taking a Page from Industry to Clean Up Drinking Water

There is more in that glass of water you just drank than meets the eye. Caffeine, perfumes, ibuprofen, and hormones are just a few of the pollutants that are not regulated and for which wastewater plants do not commonly treat. Known as “emerging contaminates,” these pollutants are accepted largely because there is no clear way to remove them. And so we all drink them regularly. What if we could...
Lisa Heineman

Working Group Members Perform and Gain an Award

Lisa Heineman (History and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies) and Kim Marra (Theatre Arts and American Studies) formed one of the inaugural 2011 Obermann Working Groups in order to explore how scholars might communicate their academic interests through performance and artists might use researchers’ methods to explore issues they usually address before live audiences. As scholars, Marra and...

Illustrating Plutarch

Artist Katie Merz and author John D'Agata first met nearly ten years ago when they were at the MacDowell Colony, the famed artists' colony in New Hampshire. More recently, they reconnected when both had residencies in Marfa, Texas. "I was making acetate pieces in which I took text from things I was reading and threw it into old cartoons," says the Brooklyn-based Merz whose style comes in part from...

Burial Mounds Focus of Weeklong NEH Grant Preparation

John Doershuk, Iowa's State Archaeologist, will lead a group this week (June 25-29) at the Obermann Center to prepare for an NEH Collaborative Research Grant. The group, which includes participants from the State Archaeologist's Office, UI faculty, and representatives from American Indian tribes, is seeking to advance investigation of prehistoric mound building. Ancient burial mounds appear to be...

Two Obermann Scholars Awarded Public Engagement Grants

Chuck Connerly, Urban & Regional Planning, Graduate College and co-director of the Obermann Graduate Institute, and Karla McGregor, Communications Sciences & Disorders, CLAS, and a Spring 2011 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence, have received Public Engagement Grants (PEG) via the Office for the Vice President for Research. These competitive awards, which are in their inaugural year, are...

Recent Events

Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: In the Shadow of the Inquisition, the US Constitutional Right to Liberty of Conscience promotional image

Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: In the Shadow of the Inquisition, the US Constitutional Right to Liberty of Conscience

Wednesday, April 10, 2024 12:00pm to 1:00pm
University Capitol Centre

Part of the series: Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: Spain, Portugal, and the Americas

"In the Shadow of the Inquisition: The US Constitutional Right to Liberty of Conscience"

Dr. Isaac Amon
Director of Academic Research, Jewish Heritage Alliance 
Adjunct Professor, Washington university School of Law, St. Louis, Missouri

Sponsors of the series: The Jewish Studies Working Group; The Anne Frank Initiative; International Programs; Obermann Center for Advanced Studies; Center for...

Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: Spain, Portugal, and the Americas promotional image

Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: Spain, Portugal, and the Americas

Tuesday, April 9, 2024 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Phillips Hall

Join us for a Public Talk:

"The Legacy of Sefarad: (Crypto) Jewish Experiences in Spain and Portugal,” Dr. Isaac Amon, Director of Academic Research, Jewish Heritage Alliance and Adjunct Professor, Washington University School of Law, St. Louis, Missouri "Zamora Sefardí: Jewish Legacy in Zamora, Spain,” Dr. Jeśus Jambrina, Professor of Spanish, Viterbo University, LaCrosse, Wisconsin
 

This is part of the series: "Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: Spain, Portugal, and the...

Office of Community Engagement: Engagement Summit promotional image

Office of Community Engagement: Engagement Summit

Tuesday, April 9, 2024 (all day)
University Capitol Centre

The Engagement Summit brings together faculty, staff, students, and community partners to explore and celebrate a year of impactful community engagement work between the University of Iowa and communities across Iowa and beyond.

This daylong event will include sessions and speakers on important topics in community engagement, including community-engaged research, the impact of engagement on communities, creative place-making and improving quality of life in communities, graduate education and...

Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: Jewish Studies Certificate Launch promotional image

Jewish Stories of Identity and Belonging: Jewish Studies Certificate Launch

Monday, April 8, 2024 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

Join us to celebrate the University of Iowa's new Jewish Studies Program, featuring remarks by members of the campus community and a discussion of Sephardic history, identity, and citizenship with:

Dr. Isaac Amon
Director of Academic Research, Jewish Heritage Alliance 
Adjunct Professor, Washington university School of Law, St. Louis, Missouri

Dr. Jeśus Jambrina
Professor of Spanish, Viterbo University, LaCrosse, Wisconsin
Founder of the Centro Isaac Campantón

This is part of the series:...

Midwest Graduate Music Consortium Conference 2024

Sunday, April 7, 2024 8:00am to 9:00pm
Virtual

The 28th annual meeting of the Midwest Graduate Music Consortium (MGMC) will be hosted by the University of Iowa on April 6-7, 2024. This conference will feature paper presentations, a new music concert by the University of Iowa New Music Center, and a keynote address by Dr. Eric Saylor, Professor of Musicology at Drake University.

MGMC is a joint venture organized by graduate students from the University of Chicago, the University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and the University of...

Craft Critique Culture Graduate Conference: Black Legacies promotional image

Craft Critique Culture Graduate Conference: Black Legacies

Saturday, April 6, 2024 12:00pm

On April 4–6, 2024, English graduate students are hosting the 23rd annual Craft Critique Culture interdisciplinary graduate conference on the University of Iowa campus. This year’s conference addresses themes of “Black Legacies.” For this conference, “Black Legacies” is, first, a recognition and continued contribution to the history of Black Studies programs in colleges and universities, which emerged in the 1960s and ’70s. “Black Legacies” is also a way to honor and celebrate the power of...