Upcoming Events

Graduate Student Writing Group Session & Social promotional image

Graduate Student Writing Group Session & Social

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 11:00am to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, in collaboration with Grad Success & Belonging, is hosting a writing group followed by a social for Graduate & Professional Student Appreciation Week. This writing group session facilitated by two grad ambassadors will offer community and accountability to Iowa's graduate and professional students working on any kind of academic writing project (academic articles/essays, fellowship or grant applications, dissertations, book projects, etc.). The session...
Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs promotional image

Writing for The Conversation: Informational Lunch for Grad Students and Postdocs

Friday, April 11, 2025 12:00pm to 1:30pm
111 Church Street
Join the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, and the Graduate College for lunch and an introduction to pitching your research to The Conversation US with Kristy Nabhan-Warren, Associate Vice President for Research.  The Conversation is an independent news organization dedicated to unlocking the knowledge of academic experts for the public good. With a monthly readership of 20 million, The Conversation expertly shares a scholar’s expertise far...
Annual Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day 2025 promotional image

Annual Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day 2025

Saturday, April 12, 2025 (all day)
MacLean Hall
In honor of Sonia Kovalevsky, the Department of Mathematics at the University of Iowa organizes Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day yearly with the goal to inspire young women interested in math and show them that math is like solving a puzzle. Sonia Kovalevsky High School Mathematics Day is an opportunity for young women to engage in a day of networking, mentoring, and fun! The daylong program includes workshops, interactive talks, math related games and panels of professionals with...
Graduate Student Session with Mark Simpson-Vos, Obermann Editor-in-Residence promotional image

Graduate Student Session with Mark Simpson-Vos, Obermann Editor-in-Residence

Thursday, April 17, 2025 10:00am to 11:00am
111 Church Street
This interactive talk for PhD and MFA students in the writing disciplines will outline the publishing process for first books. The session will guide graduate students through the steps of the academic publishing process, with a focus on demystifying the journey from dissertation/thesis to manuscript to published book. Key topics will include identifying the right academic publisher, understanding peer review, negotiating contracts, and building a strong proposal. Led by Mark Simpson-Vos, Senior...
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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

18 Graduate Fellows Engage in Graduate Institute

The 6th annual Obermann Graduate Institute on Public Engagement and the Academy will have three more Graduate Fellows than in past years, thanks to additional funding from the UI Graduate College. This year's co-directors (shown at right), Rachel Williams (GWSS and Art & Art History) and Chuck Connerly (Urban & Regional Planning) will lead a group of students who hail from degree programs as...

Teresa Mangum Joins Imagining America Board

Obermann Director Teresa Mangum has been named to the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life (IA). Imagining America is a consortium of universities and organizations dedicated to advancing the public and civic purposes of humanities, arts, and design. The UI has been a member for nine years. This year, the UI sent nearly 20 people, including...

Lena Hill Organizes Ellison Events

Incoming Cmiel Semester (Spring, 2012) participant Lena Hill (English) recently organized a weeklong series of panels and readings in association with a visiting producer/director who is adapting Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man for the stage. After participating in a workshop with Hancher Auditorium and the Center for Teaching about how to incorporate Hancher events into UI classrooms, Hill...

Chris Brochu

Chris Brochu (Fellow-in-Residence, Spring 2011) has looked at crocodile fossils in Namibia, Italy, and China. Once in Nairobi, the lights went out and he worked by flashlight. During a visit to a collection of crocodile collectors in France, the associate professor in Geoscience photographed fossils in one member’s backyard while enjoying a bottle of local wine. Brochu didn’t begin graduate school...

Mary Campbell

Mary Campbell notices the hues of people’s skin and sees possibilities. There are possibilities for how medical workers will treat us based on the color of our skin, how much money we’ll make, where we’ll go to school, and even who will be our romantic partner. Skin tone, says, Campbell, an Associate Professor in Sociology and an Obermann Fellow-in-Resident (Fall, 2011), shapes our experiences...
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Music Therapy

The nurses at the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital were bothered by the high pain ratings from kids who had gone through spinal fusion for scoliosis. But one of the therapies that received high ratings for helping with pain was music therapy.This is how Mary Adamek, clinical professor of Music Therapy, and Kirsten Nelson, UI Children’s Hospital music therapist, got the idea to develop a...

Recent Events

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...
"Humanities for the Public Good" Launch promotional image

"Humanities for the Public Good" Launch

Tuesday, November 13, 2018 4:30pm to 5:30pm
Iowa City Public Library
On November 13 at 4:00 p.m. at the Iowa City Public Library, Teresa Mangum, Director of the UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, will share details of a new 4-year program funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, "Humanities for the Public Good: An Integrative, Collaborative, Practice-Based Humanities PhD." The event will feature opening remarks by John Keller, Dean of the Graduate College and Interim Vice President for Research & Economic Development; a talk titled “The Future of the...
A reading by Murata Sayaka and Ginny Tapley Takemori promotional image

A reading by Murata Sayaka and Ginny Tapley Takemori

Tuesday, October 30, 2018 7:00pm to 8:00pm
Gilmore Hall
The Japan Foundation New York together with International Programs, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the Obermann Center, and the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures present a workshop and bilingual reading with Murata Sayaka and Ginny Tapley Takemori on Tuesday, October 30, 2018. Murata Sayaka is one of Japan’s most prominent writers, known for her frank explorations of the role of sex and gender in contemporary society. She received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize...
Murata Sayaka and Ginny Tapley Takemori promotional image

Murata Sayaka and Ginny Tapley Takemori

Tuesday, October 30, 2018 2:00pm to 3:15pm
Phillips Hall
The Japan Foundation New York together with International Programs, the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the Obermann Center, and the Division of World Languages, Literatures, and Cultures present a workshop and bilingual reading with Murata Sayaka and Ginny Tapley Takemori on Tuesday, October 30, 2018. Murata Sayaka is one of Japan’s most prominent writers, known for her frank explorations of the role of sex and gender in contemporary society. She received the prestigious Akutagawa Prize...
Gerrymandering, Voter Registration, and Access to the Ballot—An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Gerrymandering, Voter Registration, and Access to the Ballot—An Obermann Conversation

Thursday, October 25, 2018 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
How is voting restricted in our country in lawful ways? For this Obermann Conversation, political scientist Tracy Osborn, grassroots organizer Sharon Lake and legal advisor Andrew Bribriesco will discuss issues ranging from gerrymandering, Iowa's voter registration law, voter identification, and lack of voting rights for felons.  Tracy Osborn is an associate professor in the UI Department of Political Science and the director of the Politics and Policy Program at the Iowa Public Policy Center...
Get It Done! Flow: Finding (And Keeping!) Joy in Academic Writing & Research promotional image

Get It Done! Flow: Finding (And Keeping!) Joy in Academic Writing & Research

Tuesday, October 16, 2018 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street
Most of us have experienced inspiration and a sense of discovery in our research, moments that remind us, this is why I do it. Flow, however, can feel all too rare—crowded out by meetings, never-ending email, or the challenges we face when we sit down to write and think.  Amidst these intensities, finding (and keeping!) joy in our research might seem like a luxury. Yet in addition to potentially making our days more pleasant, cultivating pleasure in our research can enhance its rigor...