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

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

"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...
Exploring Women in Sports and Title IX's Legacy—An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Exploring Women in Sports and Title IX's Legacy—An Obermann Conversation

Tuesday, September 25, 2018 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library
Our first Obermann Conversation of the semester features Diane Williams (M.S., M.A.Ed., and doctoral candidate in American Studies and GWSS) and Megan Oesting, head coach of the Eastern Iowa Swim Federation and the Eastern Iowa Swim School. Diane and Megan, both lifelong athletes and coaches, will provide a primer on Title IX, why it was created and how it’s been used (or not used) since its inception; review the experiences of female coaches; and discuss how having a female coach affects...