Upcoming Events & Deadlines

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar promotional image

Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities Seminar

Thursday, January 14, 2027 8:30am to 12:30pm
Iowa Memorial Union (IMU)

The Research Development Office is hosting an in-person grant writing seminar, Planning and Writing Successful Grant Proposals in the Creative Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, that will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 13 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. and Thursday, Jan. 14 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. in the IMU. The seminar is presented by AtKisson Training Group.

This seminar will cover fundamental concepts of proposal planning and writing for the Arts and Humanities faculty backed by concrete...

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Thursday, April 1, 2027 5:00pm
111 Church Street

This new Obermann Center program offers modest yet swift support for those portions of research and creative endeavors by UI scholars that are important toward advancing a project but do not have enough funding from other sources. We will grant 10 awards of $500 or less per academic year. Note that funds need to be spent by June 30 of each year.

Eligibility: Open to all University of Iowa faculty and staff researchers who have not received a SIP award in the past academic year.

Application...

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...

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News

Lunchtime Lecture Series Focuses on Public Humanities in Contemporary Culture

PDH4L, or Public Digital Humanities for Lunch, is a new series sponsored by the Digital Studio for the Public Humanities to explore how digital technology is changing humanities, and explores some of the promises, challenges and surprises of digital learning. The talks are all in Room 3052 of the Main Library.Two talks are forthcoming in November. On November 15, UI HASTAC Scholar Audrey Altman...

Barbara Eckstein

Barbara Eckstein is a Fall 2012 Obermann Fellow-in-Residence and a University of Iowa professor of English. She is also on the faculty of the UI Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) 
and is affiliated with International Programs. She’s previously served as Associate Provost for Academic Administration. Currently, she is in the early phases of an extensive study of the...
old map of world

"Circulating Culture" Working Group Hosts UMass-Amherst Scholar Laura Doyle

The Obermann Center “Circulating Cultures” Working Group will host the upcoming visit by Laura Doyle, Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Doyle, who specializes in questions of transnationalism, modernity, and empire in literary studies, will give a public lecture, “Reading Otherwise: Interdisciplinarity, History, and the Dialectics of Culture,” on Thursday, October...

Genetics - From Frankenstein to the Future

"The era of personalized genomic medicine is fast approaching,” says Richard Smith, Professor of Otolaryngology, Pediatrics, Molecular Physiology, and Biophysics. “Clinicians will provide health care tailored to each person’s genome to inform choices about medications, disease and disease prevention, and surgical risks.” Smith, who is the Co-Director of the University of Iowa Institute of Human...

The Latino Midwest

Latino culture has been helping shape the United States for hundreds of years, even before the U.S. was a country. Though the Latino population in the Midwest is small compared to other areas of the country, it continues to grow, infusing Latino art, literature, and music into the culture of the heartland.The Latino Midwest, the 2012-13 University of Iowa Obermann-International Programs Humanities...

Migration Letters

Alejandro García-Lemos first came to the U.S. from his home in Colombia in order to attend graduate school in 1997. The painter, who now works as an interpreter for immigrants in hospitals and at the courthouse in Columbia, South Carolina, had visited the U.S. many times before finally decided to stay. "You meet someone, life changes," he says with a small laugh. The process of staying has hardly...
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Recent Events

Targeting the Psychological Roots, Not Branches, of Vaccine Confidence promotional image

Targeting the Psychological Roots, Not Branches, of Vaccine Confidence

Friday, April 10, 2026 3:00pm to 3:45pm
Biology Building East
Aaron Scherer examines the psychological roots of vaccine confidence and how to communicate more effectively about science.
Humanities Write-In promotional image

Humanities Write-In

Thursday, April 9, 2026 2:00pm to 4:00pm
111 Church Street

The Graduate College has joined the Graduate Student Senate and the Graduate & Professional Student Government to encourage a week-long celebration of our graduate students April 6–10, 2026.

Celebrate Graduate Student Appreciation Week with dedicated writing time and meaningful community. Join us for a focused Humanities Write-In facilitated by Grad Ambassadors, designed to offer structure, accountability, and connection for Iowa’s graduate and professional students working on any kind of...

Iowa Care Lab Distinguished Senior Scholar Lecture

Friday, March 27, 2026 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Old Capitol Museum

Lori Gruen, Wesleyan University

"Empathy’s Role in Care Ethics"

Supported by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost, The Office of the Vice President for Research, the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, the Philosophy Department, the Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies Department, the Religious Studies Department, and the Psychiatry and Early Neurobiological Development Lab.

"More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People" — keynote lecture by Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute promotional image

"More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People" — keynote lecture by Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute

Friday, March 27, 2026 3:00pm to 4:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

This is a keynote lecture for the 2025-2026 Obermann Symposium: "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research."

Andy Mink, Smithsonian Institute: "More than 'Not Urban': Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People"

What are synonyms for rural? Country and small town? Rustic or backcountry? Pastoral or hick? Rural communities are an important part of American life and history, yet they are frequently seen in a deficit model defined by what they are not instead of what they...

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 from across the U.S., 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 begin to discuss challenges...

"Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods” — keynote lecture by Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam promotional image

"Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods” — keynote lecture by Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam

Thursday, March 26, 2026 6:00pm to 7:00pm
Stanley Museum of Art

This is a keynote lecture for the 2025-2026 Obermann Symposium: "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research."

Esther Pereen, University of Amsterdam: "Reimagining the Rural from Idyll to Hinterland: Exhausting Rural Childhoods”

Across the social and cultural realms, the rural is often imagined through idyllic and pastoral genres that allow it to be conceived as a refuge from globalization. Pereen's European Research Council–funded project RURAL IMAGINATIONS, concentrating on...