Upcoming Events

"Rural Community-Centered Research: Maternity Care and Why It Matters" — Keynote lecture (in person and virtual) by Katy Kozhimannil, University of Minnesota promotional image

"Rural Community-Centered Research: Maternity Care and Why It Matters" — Keynote lecture (in person and virtual) by Katy Kozhimannil, University of Minnesota

Tuesday, March 24, 2026 7:30am
Virtual

Special Preliminary Event for the Obermann Symposium "Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research."

This lecture, co-sponsored by the UI Carver College of Medicine, is designed for a non-clinical audience and will be open to the public. Katy B. Kozhimannil is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Co-Director of the University of Minnesota Rural Health Research Center and the University of Minnesota Rural Health Program.

The lecture will take place in Pediatric...

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 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...

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...

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Upcoming Application Deadlines

Upcoming Application Deadlines

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants promotional image

Application Deadline: Small Important Project Grants

Friday, May 8, 2026 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 ten 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

Graduate students: Note that the Graduate College offers Small Grants for the...

News

Story City by Grant Wood, remixed

Building community around rural research

Office of the Vice President for Research
A pregnant woman in rural Iowa must make so many extra decisions about her and her baby’s health. It isn’t just whether she should go to the hospital about unexpected complications, but which one. If she goes to the closest hospital, will it have the expertise to treat her? If not, will it have an ambulance that can transfer her to a more urban hospital? One Iowa mom facing these questions inspired Stephanie Radke, clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Iowa, to found the Iowa Perinatal Quality Care Collaborative (IPQCC). IPQCC is responsible for improving communication and collaboration among groups addressing obstetrical and neonatal care in Iowa, especially in rural communities.
Andy Mink

Beyond “Not Urban”: Andy Mink on Serving Rural Communities

Maria Torres Melgares
Obermann Center for Advanced Studies
As part of the 2025–2026 Obermann Symposium, Cultivating Rurality: Building Community around Rural Research (March 26–27), we’re excited to welcome Andy Mink, founding director of the Smithsonian’s Rural Initiative. In his keynote “More than ‘Not Urban’: Serving Rural Communities as Places and as People” on March 27, he'll explore how the Smithsonian is redefining itself as more than a destination in Washington, D.C., becoming a public service accessible to rural communities nationwide through collaborative, community-sourced partnerships that respond to local priorities and challenges. In advance of his visit, Obermann Program Coordinator Maria Torres Melgares spoke with Andy about his work and the ideas he’ll bring to the symposium.
work with us graphic

Seeking Humanities/Arts PhD Student for Program Coordinator Position, '26-'27

The Obermann Center for Advanced Studies seeks an advanced (ABD) humanities or arts PhD student to work with Obermann staff to support programs and events and tell the stories of the exciting research projects and initiatives supported by the Center during the 2026–2027 school year.
collage of grad interns in the field

Six paid summer internships available to humanities grad students through new grant

Office of the Vice President for Research
As a graduate student in film and media, internships were a formative experience for Lauren Burrell Cox, associate director at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies. They helped her define her values and identify meaningful professional roles where her skills could be put to use across the humanities ecosystem. Now, she’s received a grant from Humanities Without Walls (HWW) to provide six paid internship opportunities with local nonprofits for UI humanities graduate students this summer. “My goal is to make sure that humanities graduate students are equipped with robust, transferrable skills and access to pathways that lead to secure and fulfilling work,” says Cox. The three selected nonprofits have hosted successful internships and externships in the past, through the Obermann Center’s Mellon-funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative and the Obermann Humanities Without Walls Faculty Externship. Each site will host two HWW interns this June and July.
Pervin's talk at IWP

The Texture of Memory: Pervin Saket's Project to Preserve Parsi Heritage

Maria Torres Melgares
Imagine a small boat on large, dark sea. Imagine families of refugees, with small children and smaller bundles of belongings. Imagine them braving storms and starvation and shipwreck. It sounds like something from yesterday’s news report, but this historical exodus took place between the 8th and 11th centuries CE, when Arab Muslims conquered the once-expansive Persian Zoroastrian empire. Faced with religious persecution, groups of Zoroastrians escaped in boats and landed on the shores of Gujarat in India. Pervin Saket’s project as an Obermann International Fellow focuses on this community, her community, in modern-day India. Zoroastrianism, the world’s oldest monotheistic religion, is now practiced by only a handful of people, and that too is threatened by extinction. Saket says, “In the version I learned on my grandmother’s lap, the Parsis (literally “people of Pars or Persia”) were taken to the local king when they washed up on the shores of Gujarat. Suspicious of the foreigners, he showed them a bowl of milk filled to the brim, to indicate his land was full. The Parsi leader responded by sprinkling a few grains of sugar on the milk. I suspect that the king had a fondness for good metaphors."
Katy Schroeder and black horse

Allies in Healing: Katy Schroeder and the Human-Animal Interactions for Wellbeing Collaborative

College of Education
The first time Katy Schroeder truly understood the positive impact of connecting people with animals in therapy, she wasn’t sitting in a lab or behind a desk. She was standing beside a horse. “I realized how passionate I was about integrating human-horse interactions into mental health treatment,” she recalls. “It was such a powerful realization.” At the time, Schroeder was living in Bend, Oregon, and pursuing her master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling. The idea of incorporating animals into therapy wasn’t new — but it also wasn’t widely studied or regulated. Still, something about it clicked. It lit a path she hadn’t seen before. “I caught the research bug,” she says. Encouraged by a mentor, Schroeder stayed on to earn her doctorate at Oregon State University, where she discovered her second calling: teaching. “That’s really when everything started to come together for me.” That clarity eventually led her to the University of Iowa, where she now serves as an associate professor in the College of Education's Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program in the Department of Counselor Education. There, she’s quietly reshaping how students — and the field—understand the relationship between humans and animals in mental health care.
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Recent Events

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium promotional image

Reading and Re-Translation - an international colloquium

Thursday, March 28 to Saturday, March 30, 2019 (all day)
University Capitol Centre

“Reading and Re-translation" is an international and interdisciplinary colloquium dedicated to the theorization and practice of reading. With funding from an International Programs Major Projects Award, organizers and speakers from around the globe will focus on the current state of research on reading and re-translation and will generate scholarly and creative exchanges between colleagues in diverse fields in the arts, sciences, literatures, and humanities.

The conference opens with a special...

The Future of US Politics: Looking Ahead to 2020 promotional image

The Future of US Politics: Looking Ahead to 2020

Wednesday, March 27, 2019 7:00pm to 9:00pm
The Englert

Join us for a thoughtful discussion of politics in the United States and the future of the Democratic and Republican parties from left, right and analytical perspectives. Featuring Melissa Ryan of Ctrl Alt-Right Delete, Chris Buskirk of American Greatness, and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Local Disabilities Initiatives: An Obermann Conversation promotional image

Local Disabilities Initiatives: An Obermann Conversation

Wednesday, March 27, 2019 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Iowa City Public Library

In this Obermann Conversation, we’ll hear from activists representing various organizations about current projects that support, amplify, and advocate for people with disabilities. Tammy Nyden gives an overview of the work of the Johnson County Children’s Colation, a project of our local NAMI; Michael Hoenig shares the disability training offered to UI health sciences students; Andrew Tubbs describes the work of Combined Efforts’ multi-arts projects; Sujit Singh will talk about a local...

Commitment to Internationalization Lecture Series promotional image

Commitment to Internationalization Lecture Series

Monday, March 11, 2019 4:30pm
University Capitol Centre

Philip Altbach is the fifth speaker in the Commitment to Internationalization lecture series. His talk, "The Peril and Promise of Internationalization in the Era of Trump, Brexit, and Global Competition," continues the conversation about the UI's vision and strategic themes for campus internationalization.

RSVP online.

Philip G. Altbach is Research Professor and Founding Director of the Center for International Higher Education at Boston College, where from 1994 to 2015 he was the Monan...

National Experiments in Career Diversity: A Day-long Obermann Working Symposium promotional image

National Experiments in Career Diversity: A Day-long Obermann Working Symposium

Friday, March 8, 2019 (all day)
Iowa City Public Library

Across the country, leaders of PhD programs in the humanities face a conundrum. How can a department honor the subjects, methods, and practices of their disciplines while also preparing graduates for diverse careers?

To inspire our thinking, we have invited directors of some of the most imaginative programs across the country for an Obermann Working Symposium as part of the Andrew W. Mellon–funded Humanities for the Public Good initiative. The daylong program will be held Friday, March 8 at the...

Facilitate a Better Gathering — a GET IT DONE! lunchtime workshop promotional image

Facilitate a Better Gathering — a GET IT DONE! lunchtime workshop

Friday, March 1, 2019 12:00pm to 1:00pm
111 Church Street

How can you break out of the meeting mold of working diligently through an agenda? How can a class start to feel more like a community? How can we invite everyone to participate?

Borrowing from their readings in books that focus on creating community change, such as In the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer and Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown, several members of the Obermann Working Group "Modes and Models of Facilitation" will demonstrate several tools and methods for creating more...