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...

View more events

Spacer

News

Overlap of Gesture and Memory

When Susan Wagner Cook, an assistant professor in Psychology (CLAS) submitted a paper on hand gestures a few years ago, she received feedback from reviewers that her understanding of memory was about twenty years behind. Disappointed, but also knowing that she was unlikely to assimilate two decades of research into her thinking without serious commitment, she tabled the paper. She gave it second...
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...

Recent Events

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival promotional image

Iowa City International Documentary Film Festival

Thursday, April 23 to Sunday, April 26, 2026 (all day)
Adler Journalism and Mass Communication Building
The Iowa City International Film Festival is a student-run experimental film festival hosted in Iowa City.
Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026 promotional image

Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026

Saturday, April 18, 2026 (all day)
University of Iowa
Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026 supported by the Department of History, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Obermann Center, and the Perry A. and Helen J. Bond Fund for Interdisciplinary Interaction at the University of Iowa
Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026 promotional image

Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026

Friday, April 17 to Saturday, April 18, 2026 (all day)
University of Iowa
Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026 supported by the Department of History, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Obermann Center, and the Perry A. and Helen J. Bond Fund for Interdisciplinary Interaction at the University of Iowa
Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026 promotional image

Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026

Thursday, April 16 to Saturday, April 18, 2026 (all day)
University of Iowa
Association of Ancient Historians Meeting 2026 supported by the Department of History, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Obermann Center, and the Perry A. and Helen J. Bond Fund for Interdisciplinary Interaction at the University of Iowa
Global Vaccines in a Time of Climate Change, Megacities, and Antiscience promotional image

Global Vaccines in a Time of Climate Change, Megacities, and Antiscience

Friday, April 10, 2026 4:30pm to 5:15pm
Biology Building East
Peter Hotez addresses the global challenges facing vaccination efforts, including climate change, urbanization, and organized antiscience movements.
The DTP Vaccine and Narratives of Injury promotional image

The DTP Vaccine and Narratives of Injury

Friday, April 10, 2026 3:45pm to 4:30pm
Biology Building East
Tara Smith explores the history of the DTP vaccine and the narratives that shape public perception of vaccine injury.